Ruirui Ouyang Johnson, Piano
Ruirui Ouyang Johnson is a native of Tianjin, China. She received her undergraduate degree in piano performance at the Tianjin Conservatory of Music in 2002 under the supervision of Alexey Sokolov and Svetlana Sokolova. For several years thereafter, she taught piano in Tianjin. In 2008, she first came to Oklahoma City for advanced music studies, where she received her MM with honors in Piano Performance at Oklahoma City University in 2011 under the supervision of Dr. Sergio Monteiro. After serving as a piano teacher in and around Macau, China for three years, Ruirui returned to the United States for her doctoral studies. After completing one year towards her degree with Dr. Kevin Chance at the University of Alabama, she transferred to the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 2015, where she is continuing her work towards a D.M.A. in Piano Performance with Dr. Jeongwon Ham.
Since returning to the United States in 2014, Ruirui has won four piano competitions: the University of Oklahoma Concerto Competition in December 2015 (she performed Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, Movement I with the OU Symphony Orchestra in March 2016); the Alabama Music Teachers’ Association Concerto Competition and the University of Alabama Concerto Competition, which led to her performance of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the University of Alabama Symphony Orchestra in the spring of 2015; and the Piano Solo Competition of the Alabama Music Teachers’ Association in the spring of 2015.
She served as the pianist and assistant conductor of the University of Alabama Opera Theatre, as well as a vocal coach. Her piano teaching in Macau, Tianjin and Zhuhai, China led to several teaching awards, including the Liszt Memorial Prize for Excellence in Teaching at the Hong Kong International Piano Open Competition. She has served as a vocal and instrumental accompanist in the United States and China, as well as a piano competition judge in China and a church pianist and organist in Stroud, Oklahoma.