AUDIO CLIPS
>> click on the links below to listen to clips of Chiayu’s compositions >>
→Feng Nian Ji (Harvest Festival) Excerpt
→Shan Ko (Mountain Song) Excerpt
→Xuan Zang: Zen Journey Excerpt
BIOGRAPHY
Composer Chiayu Hsu‘s career has been burgeoning with a remarkable number of commissions. In April 2010, her Shan Ko was selected by the EarShot program and read by the Nashville Symphony under the baton of Maestro Giancarlo Guerrero. Of Chiayu’s Moods [for oboe and string quartet], Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun wrote, “[it] combines lyricism and mild dissonance in a taut package…the performance revealed the work’s strengths.”
Chiayu’s music has been premiered by the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, pianist Natalie Zhu, oboist Katherine Needleman, the ensemble eighth blackbird, and the Prism Quartet. Her works have been performed at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, Zankel Hall, Davies Symphony Hall, Max M. Fisher Music Center, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Skirball Center for Performing Arts, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Moscow Open Harp Festival, and have been broadcast on WFIU, WIRU and WPKN Today. Her Among Gardens has been released, to critical acclaim, on pianist Natalie Zhu’s Meyer Media Records CD, “Images.”
Chiayu has received numerous awards and honors for her compositional endeavors. In 1999, her Dinkey Bird won the Maxfield Parrish composition contest and was the subject of a feature in Philadelphia Inquirer. Shui Diao Ge To, composed for the 2004 Milestones Festival, received a 2005 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award. She has also received the first prize in the National Taiwan Academy of Art Composition Competition, in the Charlotte Civic Orchestra Composition Competition, in the Philip Slates Memorial Composition Contest, the Prism Quartet Student Commission Award, the Renée B. Fisher Foundation Composer Award, the William Klenz Prize, the Sorel Organization’s 2nd International Composition Competition, music+culture 2009 International Competition for Composers, and the 2010 Sorel Organization recording grant.
Born in Banciao, Taiwan, Chiayu received her Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music, Master’s degree and Artist Diploma from Yale University, and Ph.D. from Duke University. She has studied at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Aspen Music Festival, Fontainebleau Schools, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Her teachers have included Jennifer Higdon, David Loeb, Roberto Sierra, Ezra Laderman, Martin Bresnick, Anthony Kelley, Scott Lindroth, and Stephen Jaffe.
http://www.chiayuhsu.com/index.html
