Donna Weng Friedman is an award-winning pianist, producer, filmmaker and advocate for artistic and social change. Her career is shaped by dynamic performances, visionary projects, groundbreaking collaborations, and a deep commitment to expanding diversity and educational access in the arts.
Donna was selected as one of Musical America's Top 30 Professionals of 2024 for her outstanding contribution to the performing arts. "We asked the performing arts industry to nominate people “who persistently and relentlessly strive to keep the performing arts vital. They are thoughtful, creative, and often innovative; they are the hard workers.” You were chosen from among the nominations for your outstanding contributions."
Donna is one of the eight inaugural winners of the Spark Award 2025, presented by The New School. "This award recognizes your outstanding creativity, contributions, and impact within and beyond The New School community. Your work embodies the spirit of innovation and collaboration that defines our university, and we are so pleased to celebrate you"
Donna was inducted into the Steinway & Sons Teacher Hall of Fame in 2023, for her "passionate commitment to teaching and inspiring young people in music" - Gavin English, President of Steinway & Sons Americas.
Her newest passion project -A Silent Cry- is a two-and-a-half-minute music video set in the Himalayan Mountains—one of the world's most vital and fragile ecosystems. Without narration or dialogue, the film fuses evocative imagery and music to meditate on the urgent need to protect what is irreplaceable, exploring themes of loss, resilience, and hope. A Silent Cry recently screened in India, and earned the Best Music Video award at the Indian Independent Film Festival.
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Never Fade Away, one of Donna's most personal projects to date, is a cinematic retelling of her father's immigration journey to the United States, featuring Chun Wai Chan, the New York City Ballet's first Chinese principal dancer. The short film has garnered 46 international awards, was excerpted in Times Square, and is now archived at the Statue of Liberty Museum and Ellis Island by the National Park Service for use in permanent and temporary exhibits, for loan to other institutions, and for research by historians and others interested in the Statue of Liberty and American immigration. The project has been covered extensively by major news outlets, including CBS Morning Newscast with Cindy Hsu, ABC Eyewitness News, NBC News 4 NY, WPIX 11 News with Magee Hickey, WCBS News Radio, and the PBS series Asian American Life and is now streaming on Rhode Island PBS' Emmy award-winning series Art Inc. As a winner of the 10,000 Dreams Film Festival, Never Fade Away will tour the US and Canada 2025/2026 season. Through this deeply moving work, Donna honors the courage behind every immigrant story and ensures that these voices are never forgotten.
Donna is the inaugural winner of the Women Who Innovate Grant 2023, awarded by the International Alliance for Women in Music, Global Initiatives committee for her "impactful and meaningful" work.
Her album Heritage and Harmony: Silver Linings, featuring exclusively AAPI and BIPOC artists, garnered two Silver Medals at the 2022 Global Music Awards. Intended as a response to the wave of violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) individuals, her pandemic EP aims to promote understanding and tolerance among people of all backgrounds. In collaboration with WQXR, Donna created and produced Heritage and Harmony, a virtual concert series in celebration of Asian Pacific Heritage Month. Her story was featured on Asian Americans of New York & New Jersey | WLIW21, a segment of which has aired on PBS numerous times.
Donna was awarded a 2022 New York Women Composers grant. She is the co-creator and co-host of HER/MUSIC;HER/STORY with soprano Allison Charney, a mini-series on WQXR as well as a concert series that shines a light on women composers, past and present. She was the guest speaker on TEDx Santa Barbara's series Making Waves: Conversations with Influencers and Disruptors. Donna is the Artistic Advisor of Ariel Rivka Dance, an all-female dance company.
Donna was the featured guest artist on the National Women's History Museum's series NWHM Presents: Sundays@Home, honoring women whose activism and talents serve to inspire others. On March 8, 2022, she launched a virtual education program in collaboration with the National Women's History Museum called Heritage and Harmony: Her Art, Her Voice, featuring leading female BIPOC role models in the arts who share their stories of heritage, their challenges and their triumphs, as they seek to inspire and empower future generations of groundbreaking young women.
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Donna has performed in concert halls worldwide, and appeared as soloist with major symphony orchestras, including the Atlanta, Philadelphia and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras. She has collaborated with world-class artists including Carter Brey, Anthony McGill, Elizabeth Mann, Ani Kavafian, David Shifrin, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, Paul Neubauer, Marya Martin, Curtis Stewart and Kelly Hall-Tompkins.
The curator of the Donna Weng Friedman '80 Master Class Series at Princeton University, she is also a member of Princeton University Music Department's Advisory Council. Donna is currently serving as Vice Chair of the Friends of Thirteen Advocacy Board/WNET. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University where she was a University Scholar and a Master's of Music degree from The Juilliard School where she was a winner of the highly coveted Gina Bachauer Piano Competition as well as the William Petschek full scholarship award. Donna had the honor and privilege of studying with the great pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and the inimitable pianist Radu Lupu. She is on the piano faculty of the Mannes School of Music Prep Division of The New School.
Donna was the music supervisor and recording artist for the award-winning film documentary Frames of Life as well as for the documentaries Living Liberty and Morris Engle: The Independent. She created The Music Bee Club, an interactive classical music app series for children ages 2-8 featuring principal cellist of the NY Philharmonic Carter Brey and flutist Elizabeth Mann, produced by twenty-five-time Grammy Award winner David Frost.