中華表演藝術基金會 Chinese Performing Arts Foundation

Hung Kuan Chen 陳宏寬

Hung-Kuan Chen has been described as one of the great personalities of the music world: enigmatic, brilliant, and versatile. And he is admired both as a performer of remarkable individuality and as an inspiring teacher.

Born in Taipei and raised in Germany, Chen's early studies fostered strong roots in Germanic classicism, which he tempered with the sensibility of Chinese philosophy. Chen started his career under the guidance of Young Concert Artists after winning their competition in 1987, and has performed in the major cities of Asia, Europe and the Americas, where he has appeared with many important orchestras, including Houston, Baltimore, Israel, Montréal, Pittsburgh, the Tonhalle, San Francisco, and Shanghai. He has performed with such highly esteemed conductors as Hans Graf, Christoph Eschenbach, Joseph Silverstein, Andrew Parrott, and Sui Lan, and colleagues including Yo-Yo Ma, Cho-Liang Lin, Roman Totenberg, Denes Zsigmondy, Bion Tsang, Anthony Gigliotti, David Shifrin, and Laurence Lesser.

In 1992, Chen suffered an injury to his hand that caused neurological damage and eventually resulted in Focal Dystonia. Through Qi Gong meditation and his own unique research, he was able to heal and return to his life as a concert artist. In 1998, his first post-accident solo recital received rave reviews, and he was described as a transformed artist. Richard Dyer wrote in The Boston Globe: "Back in the '80s, Apollo and Dionysus, Florestan and Eusebius were at war in Chen's pianistic personality. He could play with poetic insight—he could also erupt into an almost terrifying overdrive. Now there is repose and the forces have been brought into complementary harmony."

Chen is a 1991 Avery Fisher Career Grant Recipient and 2nd Prize Gold Medalist in the 1983 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition. He has adjudicated numerous international piano competitions, and, since 1993, has performed in the annual music festival of the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts in Boston.

Artist Diploma, New England Conservatory. Studies with Russell Sherman. Former piano chair of Shanghai Conservatory and director of the International Piano Academy in Shanghai. Former Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Mount Royal Conservatory in Canada. Former faculty of Boston University and New England Conservatory's Preparatory School.

Cun Mo Yin 尹存墨
Walnut Hill School for the Arts

Born in 1993, seventeen years old Chinese pianist Cun Mo Yin has been widely recognized for accomplishing countless musical feats and taking the pianistic world by storm at a strikingly young age. In 2008, Cun Mo recorded Liszt’s Twelve Transcendental Etudes at the age of thirteen. The recording and accompanying performance with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra playing Liszt’s 2nd Piano Concerto, and a solo recital in the prestigious Braunschweig Music Festival in Germany, have earned him a reputation as a “young Liszt reborn.”

As a student at the Shanghai Conservatory Affiliated High School, Cun Mo was the recipient of the Yamaha Asia Music Scholarship as well as the second prize winner and the youngest contestant of the 2009 Shanghai International Piano Competition. Cun Mo’s featured appearance on China Central Television’s Piano Extravaganza before the 2008 Beijing Olympics garnered unprecedented praise from music critics and audiences alike. In 2009, as the winner of Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts Piano Competition, he appeared as a soloist with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra at Boston’s historical Esplanade performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. Currently, Cun Mo is studying with Hung-Kuan Chen at Walnut Hill School for the Arts and New England Conservatory’s Preparatory Program.

Michael Namirovsky
Yale University

From Israel, Michael Namirovsky was the first prize winner of both the 2001 Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition, and the 2004 Concorso Internationale "Citta di Cantu" competition. He studied at Munich Musikhochschule, Indiana University, Manhattan School of Music with Elisso Virssaladze, Edward Auer, and Solomon Mikovsky. Currently he is at Yale University studing with Hung-Kuan Chen.

Lukas Vondracek
New England Conservatory of Music

Born in Opava, Czech Republic, in 1986, Lukas Vondracek gave his first concert at the age of 4 and now, at the age of 24, he has visited 27 countries giving in excess of 1000 concerts.

He studied at the Vienna Hochschule with Prof. Peter Barcaba, at the Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland, with Prof. Andrzej Jasinsky, and at Ostrava University with Prof. Rudolf Bernatik. Currently, he is pursuing an Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory in Boston under the tutelage of Prof. Hung-Kuan Chen.
Vladimir Ashkenazy was the conductor when Lukas made his debut with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in May of 2002 with concerts in Prague and Italy. Since then he has appeared with BBC, Cincinnati, Helsinki, Bournemouth, Royal Liverpool, St. Petersburg, Hong Kong, NHK, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras among others with critical acclaim.

In 2001, Lukas was awarded the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Award for the most exceptional young artist in Europe. In 2009, during the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, he was awarded The Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award. In 2010, he won 1st prize at the 10th Hilton Head International Piano Competition in South Carolina. He is represented worldwide by Harrison/Parrott Ltd., London