George Xiaoyuan Fu (Piano ’16) receives Gramophone's 2025 Concept Album Award

We’re delighted to share alumnus George Xiaoyuan Fu (Piano ’16) won Gramophone’s 2025 Concept Album Award for Colouring Book, his second album for Platoon. One of the highest honors in the classical recording industry, the award celebrates recordings whose conception and programming present a distinctive artistic statement.

Praised by Gramophone as “a triumphant combination of music old and new,” Colouring Book pairs Claude Debussy’s twelve Études with contemporary, new etude-style works by British composer Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade and composer-conductor Matthew Aucoin.

The album also features Fu’s own composition, Passacaglia on a Theme by Radiohead (2020).

“This is an artist who unites seriousness and playfulness, intellectual curiosity and imagination,” notes a critic from BBC magazine. “Fu makes Debussy’s Études sound as if they had just been written, his playing wonderfully clean and crisp, never overstated but often marvelous.”

Learn more about Fu’s album and listen.