Pianist Alex Peh collaborates with musicians globally in search of shared resonances that emerge from friendship and connection. A 2021 Fulbright Global Scholar and 2019 Asian Cultural Council Fellow, he has worked with notable musicians and composers such as Claire Chase, Susie Ibarra, Anna Clyne, U Yee Nwe, Hafez Modirzadeh, Senem Pirler, and Phyllis Chen. Peh’s work has been presented internationally and throughout the United States.
Peh is a member of Talking Gong, an improvising trio with percussionist, Susie Ibarra and flutist, Claire Chase. They released their debut album in 2019, Talking Gong, on New Focus Recordings available on all major streaming platforms. The trio has performed at Carnegie Zankel Hall, Public Theater, Roulette Intermedium, and BRIC in New York City.
In 2021 Peh received a Fulbright Global Scholar fellowship that allowed him to connect with Greek pianist and musicologist Nikos Ordoulidis in Naoussa, Greece; Burmese pianist Ne Myo Aung in Bangkok, Thailand and Pooyan Azadeh in Halle, Germany. Together they created a new album of piano music, Attune, on Habitat Sounds, and a companion ethnographic film Intermittent Attunement in collaboration with Dr. Lauren Meeker, Alyson Hummer and Madelyn Colonna. Excerpts of the film and album were premiered at National Sawdust, Brooklyn NYC. Intermittent Attunement was selected for screening by the Ethnografilm festival in Paris, France at the Club D’Etoile.
Peh has received numerous grants to support his work such as Arts Midhudson, New York State Council of the Arts Grant, and New Music USA. Notably, he received a National Endowment for the Arts project grant that funded new compositions in afro/asian tuning systems for the piano by Ramin Zoufonoun and Hafez Modirzadeh.
Peh received his musical training from Indiana and Northwestern Universities where he worked with Arnaldo Cohen, Menahem Pressler, Sylvia Wang and Evelyne Brancart. He attended the Banff, Aspen and Tanglewood music festivals where he worked with Emanuel Ax, Pamela Frank, Claude Frank, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and Peter Serkin. He performed Stravinsky’s Les Noces under the baton of Charles Dutoit and the Tanglewood Festival Choir. He is an associate professor of piano at SUNY New Paltz, and associate chair of the music department.