By Caleb McGever | FāVS News Reporter
SPOKANE, Wash. – From the bustling streets of New York to the laid back streets of Spokane, Hsia-Jung Chang hopes to be a champion of unpopular culture.
In Spokane, Chang has already hosted three out of her four planned Piano Lunches, where she fills the Salem Lutheran’s sanctuary with the sounds of sonatas and fugues on the piano.
Born to a yodeling-guitarist-television-star mother in Taiwan, Chang grew up playing piano in a musical school before immigrating to the United States eventually earning her doctorate at the Manhattan School of Music. She ran a lunchtime concert series in New York before moving to Spokane, where her mother now lives.
The Spokane Piano Lunch Concert Series
Chang’s Spokane Piano Lunch concert series started in November 2025 and the final performance of the series will be on May 4. The concerts take place on Mondays from 12:10 p.m. to 12:50 p.m. Anyone with $15-$20 who is willing to spare 40 minutes of their lunch break is invited to come listen.
“Classical music is not popular culture, but there is always going to be an audience for it,” Chang said.
She recalled reading a letter from over 100 years ago, where a musician expressed their worries that classical music was dying off after noticing that all the heads in their audience had grey hair.
“I was like, ‘Well, so who’s coming to my concert?’ That was 100 years ago, those people have died off. I’m looking out and I see a lot of heads are gray as well.”
But that does not mean classical music is dying off — it means it draws an audience that bears grey hair.
“It’s not about those people who appreciate it will die. It’s about people coming to a certain time in their life where they’re emotionally and intellectually mature and they need something more than just looking at a pretty face dancing on this stage,” Chang said. “They need to feel a connection in their soul.”
Chang said that while classical music may not be popular, it still has an audience, and it is important to give them recognition.
She compared different audiences to different congregants in a church, where each member is meaningful and adds something significant and new to the congregation.
“When I’m at church, I often hear people say, ‘Oh yeah, that guy is the pillar of the church.’ And I don’t see it that way. I’ve worked for 14 years as a music director at a very small church, and you have little kids come to Sunday school. Every single person that walks through that door is a pole holding up another ground so that you can see yet another ground,” Chang said.
The third concert in the series, which took place in March and was titled “Dancing on the Keys,” featured dances from diverse backgrounds, highlighting the common humanity and new experiences life has to offer.
The concert featured Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita in B Flat Major, which draws from German, Italian, Spanish, French and British dancing tunes. In this piece, Chang explained, motifs are organized like courtyard dances and “hands become dancers” moving across the keyboard.
It also featured a more modern, Afro-Cuban styled piece written by Ernesto Lecuona. In this piece, the rhythm changes and the right hand focuses on the melody, giving listeners a more recent example of a classical dance piece.
A Ukrainian acrobatic dance piece called “Hopak” was followed by several waltzes by Frederic Chopin.
Chopin’s Polonaise in A Flat Major Op. 53, nicknamed “Heroic” because he wrote it to lift his friend’s spirits during the invasion of Poland, was the final song of the concert. The entire thing took less than an hour.
While people were encouraged to refrain from dancing until the end of the concert — “I’ll get distracted and blow a lot of notes,” Chang said with a laugh — the musical emphasis on diverse dances was meant to demonstrate their divine nature to her audience.
“You find common humanity wherever you go, but then you also find something new, right? A new way of experience, expressing your music in your body, using your body to express that divine thing that is music,” Chang said.
“I think for me, music is about channeling that divine part of yourself and connecting that with others.” Chang added.
Salem Lutheran’s pastor, Ian McPherson, said they were really glad to share the church space with Chang.
“Salem’s priority is to make sure our building is a resource for the community, especially the West Central community,” McPherson said. “We are so grateful for her creative use of the space and drawing people together around the arts,” they added.
The fourth and final concert in the Piano Lunch series is called “Schubert the Musical Giant” and takes place on May 4. Doors open at 11:45 a.m. and tickets can be purchased in-person the day of the performance.
FāVS News uses professional journalists and thoughtful commentary to explore faith, values and ethics. Support journalism like this by making a tax-deductible donation. FāVS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
