Carolyn Kleiner Cheng holds a Bachelor of Music degree, major in Piano from the University of the Philippines, summa cum laude, and a Master’s degree in Piano from the New England of Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, with distinction.  

She was a prizewinner in the MSO Young Artists’ Competitions when she was only 16.  The following year, she became the national Yamaha champion, going on to become Southeast Asian champion in electronic organ.

She has played with the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Manila Symphony Orchestra, Concert in the Park Orchestra and has given solo recitals both in the Philippines and in the US. A sought-after accompanist, she has accompanied numerous vocal artists, choral groups and up-and-coming young pianists and singers.  She has played organ and harpsichord as continuo for several productions of Handel’s Messiah and has been a featured artist at the International Bamboo Organ Festival.

Highly involved in music education, she has been trained in the Dalcroze, Kodaly and Suzuki Methods.  She received her Dalcroze License at the Longy School of Music at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1981, the first Filipino to do so, and completed a Certificate Course in the Kodaly Method in 2012 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.  She received Suzuki training from Prof. Carmencita Arambulo in the 1980’s and has been teaching it since then, finally becoming ARSA piano teacher trainer in 2023.  She has given seminars and workshops in these methods throughout the Philippines and in Southeast Asian countries as well.  Her students are prize-winners in PTGP piano competitions and in NAMCYA competitions.

Ms. Cheng taught Dalcroze Eurhythmics to pre-schoolers ages 2-6 for thirty years and was a consultant for the grade school and high school levels at a private girl’s school for twenty years.  At the University of the Philippines College of Music, she taught piano majors and minors, as well as piano literature, pedagogy and theory courses for twenty years.