Gloria Chien

From her teenage years, pianist Gloria Chien has been an important presence on the American chamber music scene. She is also an educator. Chien was born in Taiwan, where she took up the piano at age five. Her mother was a violinist in the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, and her father, although not a musician, supported both Chien and her violinist brother in their dreams of musical careers. Chien moved to the U.S. at 14 to follow her brother at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts near Boston, where she studied with Wha-Kyung Byun. A major breakthrough was a win at the Boston Symphony Concerto Competition, which carried with it the chance to appear as a soloist with the Boston Symphony itself under conductor Thomas Dausgaard. It was her first time as a concerto soloist, and, she recalled to Vermont's Rutland Herald (April 28, 2018), "I was always early. I didn't know with a big orchestra you come in right after the conductor gives the downbeat. It was kind of a big lesson to learn on the stage of Symphony Hall." Chien persevered, though, and was later invited back to perform. From Walnut Hill, she went on to the New England Conservatory of Music, where she worked with Byun and Russell Sherman and earned bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. Soon after graduating, Chien was hired to teach at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, where she remained, rising to the rank of associate professor, until returning to Boston in the late 2010s. Chien made her recording debut in 2004 on the Chandos label, backing violinist Joanna Kurkowicz in a program of music by Grazyna Bacewicz. In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series at the Hunter Museum of American Art in nearby Chattanooga, Tennessee, and served as its artistic director. Chien has appeared at such festivals as Chamber Music Northwest, Verbier Music Festival, and Music@Menlo, making appearances on several recordings issued by the latter and serving as Director of the Chamber Music Institute. She has given recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Salle Cortot in Paris, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan, among other halls, and played concertos under such conductors as Sergiu Comissiona, Benjamin Zander, and Robert Bernhardt. Chien's chamber music collaborators are a distinguished group that includes the St. Lawrence String Quartet and violinists Jaime Laredo and James Ehnes. In 2017, she and her husband, Soonvin Kim, became co-artistic directors of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. Chien and clarinetist Anthony McGill released the album Here with You: The Brahms Sonatas on the Cedille label.
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