From Singapore school dropout to Steinway Artist

The concerts proved there was an audience. Wang opened a music school that grew to between 80 and 100 students, then trained pupils to become instructors because Reunion did not have enough piano teachers.

When COVID-19 halted international travel, he remained on the island and taught for as many as 12 hours a day. He composed, improvised and posted videos online, growing his Instagram audience to more than 100,000. In June 2022, as international travel resumed, a letter in his postbox informed him that Steinway & Sons had named him a Steinway Artist.

As concert halls reopened, invitations multiplied, producing what Wang called “an explosion of concerts”. His schedule took him away from Reunion for long stretches, so he stepped back from daily lessons and left the school in the hands of the instructors he had trained.

The island once said to have no audience, no piano and too few teachers now had all three.

The school became a model for the festivals and competitions Wang went on to found. One is the Piano Island Festival, which brings young pianists together with international teachers and competition juries; its eighth edition was held in Hainan in July 2026.

Another is the Piano Concerto Festival, which held its sixth edition in 2026. It aims to give pianists something harder to obtain: repeated rehearsals with a professional symphony orchestra. After all, a pianist may spend years learning a concerto without once playing it with an orchestra; some first encounter one during a competition final, when every mistake matters.

THE MENTOR HE NEVER HAD