Faculty
Dr. Yi-Min Cai
Miss Yi-Min Cai, born in Shanghai, China, began her piano lessons at the age of five. By the age of ten, she was already recognized as a child prodigy, and was chosen to perform in a live telecast from the Great Hall in Beijing. She was admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing as an elementary student and finished her secondary school there. After her debut, Miss Cai made numerous radio and television appearances in China. In 1982, she won the first prize in the Chinese Piano Music Performance Competition and the Piano Etudes Performance Competition; both were sponsored by the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.
In 1983, she came to the United States to further her musical education, first as a scholarship student of Edith Kraft at the New School of Music in Philadelphia, and then as a student of Solomon Mikowsky and Donn-Alexandre Feder at the Manhattan School of Music in New York where she was recipient of the Elva van Gelder Memorial Scholarship. In 1987, she won the first prize in the Abraham and Phyllis Katz Young Musician Competition, sponsored by the Five-Town Music and Art Foundation in New York.
In the past few years, Miss Cai has performed in La Laguna University Music Festival in Tenerife, International Piano Festival in Lanzarote, Spain, Weill Recital Hall in New York, and Mozart on the Square Festival in Philadelphia. Miss Cai also made appearances on WQXR FM in New York and WFLN FM in Philadelphia. She is frequently invited to give lectures, master classes and workshops at many colleges and universities in the United States, Taiwan, and China, including a recent two-week visit at the prestigious Xiamen University and China Conservatory in Beijing where she was named a permanent Guest Professor for the conservatory.
Miss Cai received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music. She was on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division and the Conservatory of Concordia College in New York. Currently she is an Associate Professor of Piano at the University of North Alabama.