Nita Qiu is 18 years old and a high school graduate from Trinity School at River Ridge. Rising from the rich firmament of Minnesota pianism, Nita has achieved national recognition as an ascending young star. 

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One of Nita’s most recent highlights is being named a Winner in the 2020 National Young Arts Foundation in Classical Music/Piano last November. This past summer, Nita was named for the third year in a row a national winner of the distinguished Career Development Grant from the Chopin Foundation of the United States. In February of 2019, she also won first place in the Minnesota Orchestra’s Young People’s Symphony Concert Association (YPSCA) Concerto Competition, which will result in several performances with the Minnesota Orchestra in their 2020-2021 season. Last summer, Nita won first place in the Aloha International Piano Competition and Festival in Honolulu, HI. In the fall of 2017, she appeared as Guest Artist on the prestigious National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) program, “From the Top” and was a winner of the coveted Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholarship Award in conjunction with the program. As a 2016-2017 Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) Varsity Showcase Young Artist, Nita was selected to perform at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul in a live broadcast and had the opportunity to have her professional recording, made at MPR’s Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Studio, aired twice in 2017. In 2015, Nita was the Third Place Winner of the Aloha International Piano Competition and Festival in Honolulu, and was a National Finalist in the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) National Young Artist Competition (Junior Category) in Las Vegas. 

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Nita has performed with the Dakota Valley Symphony Orchestra (2019), the Golden Valley Orchestra (2018), the Mississippi Valley Orchestra (2015), the Young Artist World Piano Festival Orchestra (2014), and the Kenwood Symphony Orchestra (2014) as a result of being their respective competitions’ First Place winner. 

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Nita has studied for thirteen years with the nationally/internationally distinguished artist/teacher, Dr. Joseph Zins, of Crocus Hill Studios in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Enrolled in the Studio’s high intensity Performance Studies for the Gifted and Talented Pre-College Student, she is a leading member of the Premier Class. 

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Besides piano, Nita has been a competitive swimmer since the age of six. She also loves to read and watch movies. Nita is a resident of Woodbury, Minnesota. She will attend Yale University in the fall and plans to continue studying piano with Professor Wei-Yi Yang at the Yale School of Music.