A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was unveiled Wednesday honoring Lang Lang for a career as a classical pianist who has sold millions of albums and performed at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2014 FIFA World Cup.
Lang has also performed for then-President Barack Obama, Pope Francis, Queen Elizabeth II and Russian President Vladimir Putin and with Metallica, Pharrell Williams and Herbie Hancock at Grammy ceremonies.
“Wow, I can’t believe it,” Lang said as he accepted the honor. “… I was so overwhelmed I got up already at 6 a.m. It was even earlier than my son.”
He said the honor was “something I never would (have) imagined, so I think the best thing for me to do is say thank you!”
He also thanked his parents, who he said, “really pushed me a lot as a kid.”
“But it was kind of a good push — that’s why I’m here today,” he said.
Dickon Stainer, president & CEO of Universal Music Group’s Global Classics & Jazz division, and Michele Anthony, a UMG executive vice president, joined Lang in speaking at the ceremony.
The ceremony came two days before “Lang Lang By The Bay,” a concert at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego.
The star is the 2,778th since the completion of the Walk of Fame in 1961 with the initial 1,558 stars.
Born June 14, 1982, in Shenyang, the capital of the coastal Liaoning province in Northeast China, Lang was motivated to learn how to play the piano as a 2-year-old after seeing the 1947 “Tom and Jerry” cartoon, “The Cat Concerto,” which features Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.
Lang won the Shenyang Competition and gave his first public recital by the time he was 5, entered Beijing’s Central Music Conservatory when he was 9, won first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians’ Competition and played the complete Chopin Etudes at the Beijing Concert Hall at 13.
Lang and his father moved to the United States in 1997, so he pursue studies with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Lang catapulted into stardom when he was 17 as a last-minute substitution for Andre Watts to perform at the Gala Of The Century, playing a Tchaikovsky concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Lang released his first live album, “Lang Lang: Live At Seiji Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood” in 2000 and first studio album in 2003, “Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn: First Piano Concertos.”
His latest album, “Lang Lang — Saint-Saéns,” was released March 1 and opens with Saint-Saéns’ “Carnival of the Animals,” which he performs with his wife, pianist Gina Alice.
His other albums include “The Disney Book” of music from Disney films, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.”
Lang’s philanthropic endeavors include the Lang Lang International Music Foundation, which he founded in 2008 “to educate, inspire and motivate the next generation of music lovers and performers,” and being selected in 2008 as the Grammy cultural ambassador to China to promote music education and cultural understanding between the United States and China.
Lang was chosen by Time magazine in 2009 as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
“When he’s just messing around — which he does a lot — he’ll play comic riffs that sound like they’re from cartoon music,” Hancock, who toured with Lang later that year, wrote. ” He’s having fun.
“But his playing is also so sensitive and so deeply human. You hear him play, and he never ceases to touch your heart. And he’s fearless. He’s not afraid to burst the bubble of false elitism. He’ll wear a new kind of tux, with tennis shoes. That’s cool.”