Born in Taiwan, Yi Yiing Chen’s music has been described as “very different, showing the composer’s versatility and breadth of range and influence” and “an exciting amalgam of eastern and western styles.” Currently teaching music at the New England Conservatory of Music and at MIT, her works have been performed at the Tanglewood Music Festival, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Asian Composers League Festival and the Women Composers Festival of Hartford. Received awards include the Tanglewood Music Center’s Elliott Carter Memorial Composer Fellowship, the NACUSA Young Composers Competition, the LungShan Temple Scholarship, the NEC Symphony Composition Competition and the NTNU Presidential Scholarship.
Besides writing music, she is also an active pianist and presented a solo piano recital in Taiwan. She had previously served as a concert pianist of the NEC Concert Choir and performed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the New England Chinese Professionals Lunar New Year Gala. Yi Yiing also plays flute, Chinese bamboo flute and Dulcimer.
Yi Yiing has studied or worked with many other talented musicians, including John Harbison, Oliver Knussen, and Dimitri Murrath. Yi Yiing is currently a doctoral student at the New England Conservatory studying with Prof. John Heiss and Prof. Michael Gandolfi funded by NEC’s Francis Judd Cooke Scholarship. She previously received her M.M. from the Manhattan School of Music and B.A. from the National Taiwan Normal University, where her mentors included Nils Vigeland, Richard Danielpour, Reiko Füting, Mao-Shuan Chen and Gordon Chin.
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