Shih-Hui Chen

Shih-Hui Chen (Chinese: 陳士惠; born 1962) is a Taiwanese composer who lives and works in the United States.

Composer Shih-Hui Chen


Biography

Chen Shih-hui (陳士惠) was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and came to the United States in 1982 to study for a master's degree from Northern Illinois University and a doctoral degree from Boston University.[1] After receiving her DMA in Music Composition, Shih-Hui Chen took a position at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University [2] where she is currently Professor of Music Composition and Theory. Chen also serves on Asia Society Texas Center’s Performing Arts & Culture Committee and is the director of 21C: Classical, Contemporary, and Cross-Cultural Music Festival at Rice University.

Chen Shih-hui's work has been performed widely throughout the U.S. and abroad, including Taiwan, China, Germany, and Italy. In 1999, she received an American Academy in Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000, and a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2007. In 2010, Chen received a Fulbright Fellowship to study traditional Chinese Music, Nanguan music, and music of Taiwanese Indigenous peoples.

Work

Musical style

Chen Shih-hui composes for orchestra, chamber ensemble, voice, and solo instruments. She also composes music for theater and film.[3]

Her music blends both her Western training and cultural heritage. A citation accompanying her 2007 Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters states, “Among the composers of Asian descent living in the U.S.A.,Shih-Hui Chen is most successful in balancing the very refined spectral traditions of the East with the polyphonic practice of Western art-music. In a seamless narrative, her beautiful music, always highly inventive and expressive, is immediately as appealing as it is demanding and memorable.”

Selected recent compositions
  • Messages from a Formosan Village (2019)
  • Echoes from Within: A Musical Response to Cy Twombly for sheng, contrabass and electronics (2018)
  • Withhold the Umbrella for Chinese Orchestra (2018)
  • Flashback Moments for piano quartet (2018)
  • The Pilgrimage for Acapella Chorus (2017)
  • Ascending Waves for large orchestra (2017)
  • Silvergrass, Cello and Chamber Orchestra or Ensemble (2016)
  • Ten Thousand Blooms, Falling Petals for Traditional Korean Orchestra or ensemble (2015)
  • Fantasia on the Theme of Guanlingsan for Zheng and Chinese Chamber Orchestra or Ensemble (2014, 2015)
  • A Plea to Lady Chang’e for Nanguan Pipa and String Quartet or Orchestra (2013, 2014)
  • Returning Souls: Four Short Pieces on Three Formosan Amis Legends for Solo Violin or String Quartet (2011, 2013)
  • Our Names, for Narrator and Chamber Ensemble (2010)
  • Returnings, for Flute, Percussion and Cello (2010)
  • Fantasia on the Theme of Plum Blossoms for String Quartet (2007-9)

Distinctions
gollark: So five objects in the system in total.
gollark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_(mythology) might be relevant.
gollark: Anyway, the circle in the middle is kind of dull; perhaps think of other distinctive features of the Plutonian system.
gollark: Then why yellow/blue?
gollark: What's this a flag for again?

References
  1. Mittler, Barbara. Chen Shihui. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online (subscription required) (Online version of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition. ISBN 978-0-19-517067-2).
  2. Mittler, Barbara (1997). Dangerous tunes: the politics of Chinese music in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China since 1949.
  3. Film review: Special: Issues 55-56. 2005.
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