About

Early Life & Training

Born in Hanoi, M.N Pham began studying piano at the age of five under the guidance of Professor Nguyễn Thị Lan at the Vietnam National Academy of Music. A formative encounter with Chopin's nocturnes at age twelve set the course for a lifelong preoccupation with the lyrical possibilities of the instrument.

At eighteen, Pham was awarded a full scholarship to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, where studies continued under the tutelage of renowned pedagogue Claire Désert. The years in Paris deepened both technical command and a growing interest in the relationship between silence and sound.

Artistic Vision

Pham's compositions draw on the classical tradition — Chopin, Debussy, Feldman — while finding their own quiet language. The music is rarely loud. It asks the listener to lean in, to attend to the small shifts in colour and weight that give each phrase its meaning.

Recurring influences include the poetry of Paul Celan, the paintings of Giorgio Morandi, and the architecture of silence found in Japanese aesthetics. These are not sources to be quoted but atmospheres to be inhabited.

Career

Since the debut recording Études in 2019, Pham has performed at Wigmore Hall in London, Salle Cortot in Paris, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Konzerthaus in Vienna. The 2021 chamber record Resonance, made in collaboration with the Quatuor Lumière, received widespread critical acclaim.

The most recent release, Nocturnes (2023), was described by Le Monde as 'music of rare interior stillness' and by The Guardian as 'one of the most quietly assured piano records in recent memory.'