Shih-Hui Chen

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. After receiving her D.M.A. in music composition, Shih-Hui Chen took a position at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University 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.

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

• Barlow Endowment Commission (2001). • Bunting Institute Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (1996). • Fulbright Fellowship (2010) for study of traditional Chinese Music, Nanguan music, and music of the Taiwanese aboriginal people. • Fromm Music Foundation Commission (1995). • Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, American Academy of Arts and Letters (2007). • Koussevitzky Music Foundation Commission (2004). • John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2000). • Rome Prize, The American Academy in Rome, Italy (1999).

• Shepherd School of Music Faculty Biography [Contains performance calendar of Rice University engagements and further information about 21C]. • Composer's Website • Composer's SoundCloud • [Video "Returning Souls" with Formosa Quartet] • [Video "Echoes from Within: A Musical Response to Cy Twombly"]