Superstar pianist Lang Lang to perform alongside his wife, Gina Alice, on Sept. 25 at SF Symphony 2024-2025 opening gala

SAN FRANCISCO — Superstar pianist Lang Lang will perform on September 25 by joining the San Francisco Symphony to celebrate the start of the 2024–25 season in its Opening Gala. His pianist wife, Gina Alice, will also play piano on stage alongside Lang to have a duet performance in the gala concert.

The world class pianist has performed with major orchestras around the globe since the 1990s when he was still a teen. Presently Lang is invited as the featured pianist joining a list of symphony orchestras' new season opening galas in the United States. His upcoming performance is with the Boston Symphony at its Opening Night Gala on September 19.

Prior to the San Francisco Symphony Opening Gala, Lang will be joining the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on September 21.

The San Francisco Symphony Opening Night Gala on September 25 will begin at 5:30pm with red carpet arrivals and a pre-concert reception.

Lang will play Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in the San Francisco Symphony Opening Gala concert. He will also perform alongside his wife, pianist Gina Alice, in Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of the Animals, a lighthearted 14-movement piece highlighting different animals such as the lion, elephant, and swan.

Lang and Gina Alice will join Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in the concert with performance selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet throughout the Opening Gala program, including “Montagues and Capulets,” “Morning Dance,” “The Child Juliet,” and “Death of Tybalt.”

Like the opening gala concerts in other metro cities, the proceeds from the gala will support the San Francisco Symphony’s education, community, and artistic programs.

After the gala concert in San Francisco, Lang will continue his tour performance with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on September 28 and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on October 1.

Lang was born in Liaoning in China to a family of musicians. His parents are both musicians. Lang was motivated to learn piano at two years old. He started his piano lesson at age 3. He won first place at the Shenyang Piano Competition and performed his first public recital at age 5.

In 1993 at the age of 11, Lang won the Xinghai National Piano Competition in Beijing. At age 12, Lang won his first prize for outstanding artistic performance at the International Competition for Young Pianists in Ettlingen, Germany, in 1994.

Lang moved to the United States in 1997 at age 15 to pursue studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. In April 2009, the Time magazine named Lang as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In June 2019, Lang was married to German-Korean pianist Gina Alice Redlinger in Paris, France. Gina is also a talented pianist who was born in Germany to a German father and a Korean mother. She had her first piano lesson at age 4. She started performing in Germany with a solo recital in 2009 at the age of 15 and in several concerts with the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic.

As a graduate of Hamburg University of Music, Gina has performed with orchestras in China, including the Shenyang Symphony Orchestra and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. She is fluent in five languages, English, German, Korean, French and Chinese.

Over recent years since they married, Lang and Gina have performed at many of the world’s great concert halls together, playing duets side by side at pianos.