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BIOGRAPHY
CHUREN LI
PIANIST–COMPOSER
Singaporean pianist-composer Churen Li is widely regarded as one of Singapore’s leading pianists, known for a distinctly modern artistic voice that moves fluidly between classical tradition and contemporary culture. Her work weaves classical pieces, contemporary music and her own compositions and improvisations into immersive concert experiences that challenge and expand the role of the piano today. Hailed by The Straits Times as “the closest thing I know to be the ‘complete’ pianist” in Singapore, Churen tours internationally as recitalist and concerto soloist. In 2025 she is featured as pianist at Singapore’s SG60 National Day Parade (NDP), and she will give the world premiere of a new piano concerto by Jonathan Shin with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
Praised for her “poise, expressiveness and keyboard abilities”, Churen opened the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s 2022/23 season with Grieg’s Piano Concerto under the baton of Han-Na Chang. She has appeared at major festivals including the Charleston Festival, Singapore International Festival of Arts, Singapore International Piano Festival, Darmstadt International Music Festival, Aspen, Norfolk and Four Seasons, among others.
As a recording artist, Churen has released two albums of her own compositions that reimagine and refract classical works: Ephemory and LUNA. Both reveal a composer-pianist of post-modern sensibility, fluent in multiple musical languages and equally at ease transforming familiar themes into new sound worlds and presenting entirely original material. Her album Spectrum, recorded with violinist Stanislav Pronin, was released on Sony Classical. Earlier in her career, she drew notice for producing and performing a concert at Singapore’s iconic Zouk nightclub, juxtaposing Western art song and virtuosic piano repertoire within a pop-cultural setting.
Churen’s artistic work is underpinned by rigorous scholarship. Graduating at 19 as the youngest of her cohort with a Bachelor’s degree from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (National University of Singapore), she went on to study at the Yale School of Music on a full scholarship, earning a Master of Music in Keyboard Studies as the youngest graduand of her year at the age of 21 under the guidance of Peter Frankl and Hung-Kuan Chen. She later completed a Master of Philosophy in Music at the University of Cambridge with a dissertation on George Crumb, holding in total two Master’s degrees in music and philosophy from Yale and Cambridge respectively. A prize-winner at numerous international competitions, she has appeared with orchestras including the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Cambridge University Orchestra, Ding Yi Music Company, Klassische Budapest Philharmonic, Metropolitan Festival Orchestra Singapore, Mikhail Jora Philharmonic (Bacău) and the National University of Singapore Symphony Orchestra. In 2015 she toured Macau and Hong Kong as soloist with the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra at the invitation of Singapore’s Consulate-General in Hong Kong, as part of the SG50 celebrations.
Her work has been supported by major scholarships and awards including the Tan Kah Kee Postgraduate Scholarship, the FJ Benjamin–Singapore Symphony Orchestra Bursary and the National Arts Council Arts Scholarship.
Deeply committed to education and community, Churen serves on the Artist Faculty at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music and is Artist-in-Residence at Sunway University. She has previously held teaching positions at Hong Kong Baptist University and Yale-NUS College. She is the founder of Classical Music Adventures, a series of interactive classical music experiences in community venues, and the CHUREN Prize, an endowed award within the Singapore Music Teachers’ Association Performers’ Festival that supports young pianists and newly commissioned Singaporean works. Her principal teachers include Albert Tiu, Bernard Lanskey, Paul Liang, Peter Frankl and Hung-Kuan Chen.
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