Shih-Hui Chen

2000 Guggenheim Fellowships: Shih-Hui Chen

1999 Rome Prize recipient Shih-Hui Chen has received significant recognition as a young emerging composer in recent years. Her String Quartet No. 3, recently premiered by the Arditti Quartet at the Tanglewood Music Festival, was praised by The Boston Globe as having "... a sureness of step and gentleness of spirit that are very winning." In a review of Here, after There, the Globe also states that Chen's work demonstrates "... impressive things about the composer's technique and taste..." While describing the musical language of 66 Times, a song cycle performed no less than 10 times worldwide, the Cleveland Plain Dealer finds a sensitive text setting which "... abounds in arching vocal lines, harmony that sits on the precipice of tonality, and richly hued atmospheres that depict the various seasons." This work has also been analyzed by German ethnomusicologist Barbara Mittler for the Asian Music Journal CHIME, who is preparing an upcoming entry about Ms. Chen in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Born in Taipei, Taiwan (1962), Shih-Hui Chen came to the United States in 1982. Since receiving her doctoral degree in music composition from Boston University, there have been many performances of her works including those by the Philadelphia and Cleveland Symphony Orchestras for their educational programs, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Voices of Change in Dallas, and the Empyrean Ensemble in California. Also frequently appearing on programs abroad, her music has been played in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Germany, and at the International Composers Conference in Amsterdam sponsored by the Gaudeamus Foundation. As a recipient of fellowships, Ms. Chen has been awarded grants from the Fromm Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, ASCAP, and the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.

Recently completed projects include music for the documentary film Once Removed, by filmmaker Julie Malozzi premiered(Dec.'99) at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and a recital devoted entirely to Chen's work at Weill Recital Hall(Oct. '99), Carnegie Hall where Fu II for Pipa and Chamber Ensemble were premiered. Upcoming performances include Twice Removed, a premiere for solo saxophone by Ken Radnofsky (March '00), 66 Times at the 20th Anniversary Concert of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony (May '00), a recital in Rome (June '00), Earth in Merkin Hall in New York (April'01), Fu II by the members of Seattle Symphony Orchestra(May '01), and a new work by Boston Music of Viva (March '01). Shih-Hui Chen is music advisor to the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts with whom she organized the 4th International Conference on Chinese Music for April, 2000.