1999 Rome Prize recipient Shih Hui Chen, composer, 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 numerous performances of her works. These include performances by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Philadelphia and Cleveland Symphony Orchestras for their educational programs, 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 Culural Council, ASCAP, and the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.
Upcoming performances include Fu II with the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (April, '00, Pittsburg), and a commission from Earplay for their 15th anniversary and Duo Asiatica (April '00, San Francisco and Connecticut). She is also composing music for a documentary film project with filmmaker, Julie Wang-Malozzi entitled "Once Removed" released in October. '99.