Praised for “ethereal colors” and “effortless” clarinet playing (The Clarinet Journal), clarinetist Cecilia Kang enjoys a multi-faceted international career as a concert clarinetist, educator, scholar, adjudicator, and collaborator. Dr. Kang currently serves as the associate professor of clarinet at Louisiana State University, and artist faculty at Aria International Academy and Sewanee Music Festival during the summers. Since her concerto debut at age sixteen, she has frequently appeared as a soloist with symphony orchestras and bands across Asia and North America. An in-demand chamber musician, she has collaborated with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and members of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Danish Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. As an orchestral player, she has performed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to winning top prizes from the Canadian Music Competition, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Standard Life Competition, and the International Clarinet Association Research Competition, she has received numerous grants from the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Washington DC, the New Music USA, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Metropolitan Arts Council, the Alliance for Canadian New Music Projects, the Kingsway Foundation, the Hendrickson Foundation.  In 2024, she was awarded the prestigious Brij Mohan Distinguished Professor Award from Louisiana State University, the Awards to Louisiana Artists and Scholars (ATLAS) from the Louisiana Board of Regents, and the 2024 New Music Creator Fund from the New Music USA. She will appear as a headline artist at the 2025 ClarinetFest organized by the International Clarinet Association.

As a well-respected music educator, Dr. Kang has presented at the Midwest Clinic, the College Music Society Conference, the International Clarinet Association’s ClarinetFest, and the Music Educators Association conferences in Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, South Dakota, Minnesota, and North Dakota. She has given many clarinet master classes and workshops at prestigious musical institutions around the world such as Milan Conservatory (Italy), the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków (Poland), National Taiwan University of Arts (Taiwan), Yonsei University (South Korea), Thailand International Clarinet Academy (Thailand), Beijing Central Conservatory of Music (China), the University of Toronto (Canada), San Francisco Conservatory (US), and the University of Michigan (US) among many others. Dr. Kang’s digital clarinet pedagogy courses will soon be available on https://www.tonebase.co/.

Her scholarly works have been published by the Cambridge University Press, and the GIA Publications, as well as forthcoming articles by the International Clarinet Association’s Clarinet Journal and the Publishing House Academy of Music Krzysztof Penderecki (Poland). Throughout her career, she has adjudicated on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts, the International Clarinet Association, the Music Teachers National Association, the College Music Society, the Interflow Band Festival of Hong Kong, and the Vandoren Emerging Artist Competition.  

Dr. Kang is committed to seeking creative and purposeful ways to balance her musical career and community building as a 21st-century global citizen. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she established the Silver Linings Initiative, for which she organized 25 virtual panel discussions among clarinetists, music educators, and arts leaders around the world examining the paradigm shifts in the field of Music. In January 2023, she curated the groundbreaking Han and Heung Festival, celebrating stories of resilience and optimism shared by both the Korean and African-American diasporas through interweaving an unforgettable fusion of music and social dialogue.

She earned a DMA from the University of Michigan, a MM from the University of Southern California, and a BM from the University of Toronto. She has participated in professional development residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), the International Ensemble and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music (Austria), and the International Music Institute Darmstadt (Germany). Her clarinet mentors include Yehuda Gilad, Daniel Gilbert, Joseph Orlowski, Joaquin Valdepenas, Avrahm Galper, and Zeng-Ming Liao.  She is a proud Vandoren and Buffet Crampon Performing Artist and Clinician.