Early Life and Education
Chang was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Voorhees Township, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Myoung-Jun, a composer, and Min-Soo Chang, who was a violinist and music teacher. Chang's parents moved to the United States from South Korea in 1979 for her father's advanced music degree at Temple University. Her mother took composition classes at the University of Pennsylvania. Chang has said that although she "never actually lived in Korea... I do still feel very strongly it's where my roots are." She has a younger brother, Michael. In a 1998 interview to PBS, Chang explained that he is an avid tennis player and is thus often mistaken for being Michael Chang, an unrelated athlete with the same name. Her father has settled back in Korea, while her brother graduated from Princeton University in 2011.
In 1986, when Chang was 5 years old, she eventually auditioned for and was accepted to the Juilliard School by performing the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor. Chang spent her weekends attending music classes at Juilliard and shopping in New York City with her parents. In 1989, she began working with Dorothy DeLay at her studio, where her father had received his musical lessons. A former student and assistant to DeLay, Hyo Kang, also provided training to Chang. Following her 1999 high school graduation in New Jersey, she returned to Juilliard for university and studied with DeLay.
Chang learned to speak Korean. She is also fluent in German.
Due to her musical accomplishments, Chang is among a very small number of professional figures recognized as a child prodigy.
Read more about this topic: Sarah Chang
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)