Chen Hui Jen Jen, Chen Hui

Born in Kaohsiung in 1981, Chen Hui Jen began piano lessons at the age of four. In the music classes of Sinyi Elementary School and Dominican High School, Jen majored in piano with violin as a minor, and also studied erhu. Jen began majoring in composition in the music class of Kaohsiung Senior High School, then graduated from the Department of Music at National Sun Yat-sen University (1999–2003), studying with Tzyy Sheng Lee, and from the master’s program of the Department of Music at Taipei National University of the Arts (2003–2005), studying with Professor Hwang Long Pan. Since 2004 Jen has been a member of the Asian Composers League and the Taiwan Composers Association (ROC), and of the ISCM Taiwan Section.

In August 2003 Jen was selected for the Taiwan Young Composers Training Program and wrote the chamber work “Sixteen and Three-Quarter Moons” (十六又四分之三個月亮), premiered the following year at the forum of the Taipei Contemporary Music Ensemble. The chamber work “Poetry and Death” (詩與死), the choral work “Calming the Waves” (定風波), and the solo piano work “Summer Night on the River Embankment” (夏夜河堤) each won awards in the music category of the 2004 Ministry of Education Literary and Arts Creation Award (chamber music; choral and vocal ensemble; and solo instrument/voice); the sizhu quartet “Drunken Song at Midnight” (子夜醉歌) won third prize in the 2004 Chai Found Music Workshop Traditional Instrument Composition Award. While studying at Taipei National University of the Arts, Jen was selected for Kuandu New Voices 2004, which premiered the solo guzheng work “A Moment of Contemplation” (沉思瞬間); Jen’s academic paper “Scriabin’s Musical Ideas and Their Practice: The Piano Works” (探討史克里亞賓的音樂理念與實踐──以鋼琴作品為例) was published in the inaugural issue of the Kuandu Music Journal, and in 2005 Jen received a graduate scholarship. The violin concerto “Strings of the Eastern Mountain” (東山之弦) won second prize in the concerto category of the 2004 Formosa Composition Competition, and was selected for performance by the SWR Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart at the ISCM World Music Days in July 2006. In December 2006 the sizhu septet “Spectrum of an Ancient Soul” (古老靈魂的光譜) won third prize in the traditional instruments category of the Hsu Tsang-Houei Music Composition Award.

In 2006 Jen won a Ministry of Education scholarship for study abroad, went to the United States the following year, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in composition in the Department of Music at the University of California, San Diego.