Singaporean pianist Churen redefines classical pianism by blending different musical genres in her personal musical voice. Hailed as “the closest thing I know to be the ‘complete’ pianist” in Singapore by a leading music critic and a “well rounded, versatile performer” by another, she tours internationally as a classical recitalist and orchestral soloist, playing her own compositions and improvisations in concert, in addition to an eclectic repertoire from ranging from Chopin and Debussy, to Michael Jackson, John Williams, and George Crumb.
Praised for her “poise, expressiveness and keyboard abilities”, she opened the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s 2022/23 season in July ‘22 with Grieg’s Piano Concerto conducted by Han-Na Chang. Churen has also been featured in the Singapore International Piano Festival and Singapore International Festival of Arts. In the same year, her debut album Ephemory revealed a composer-pianist of contemporary and post-modern sensibilities adept in a variety of musical languages, delivering original takes on well-known classical themes as well as her own original compositions. In 2018, Churen produced and performed in a concert at Singapore’s well known Zouk nightclub, juxtaposing the Western art songs within a pop culture setting. She was among the ten pianists selected in 2018 to participate and perform in the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music, and in the same year, at the prestigious Roche Continents programme in Salzburg, an interdisciplinary programme of workshops and lectures in the arts and in science.
Graduating at the age of 19 with a Bachelor’s Degree from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (National University of Singapore) as the youngest in her cohort, Churen subsequently studied with well-known pianist Peter Frankl and Hung-Kuan Chen at the Yale School of Music where she obtained a Master’s Degree. She later went on to obtain a Master of Philosophy in Music from Cambridge University with a dissertation on George Crumb. Since then, Churen continues to be active in the performance and production of new music, working in inter-disciplinary collaborations and across genres.
A prize winner at numerous international piano competitions, Churen has also been invited to perform at music festivals and recital halls all over the world, often appearing in partnership with luxury brands such as Cartier, Chanel and Richard Mille. She was also honoured in Singapore Tatler's Generation-T List in 2018. In 2015, she performed as soloist in a tour of Macau and Hong Kong with the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music Orchestra, at the invitation of Singapore’s High Consulate in Hong Kong as part of Singapore’s 50th jubilee celebrations of independence. Other concerto engagements include performances with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Cambridge University Orchestra, Klassische Budapest Philharmonic, Metropolitan Festival Orchestra Singapore, Mikhail Jora Philharmonic of Bacau and National University of Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
She is also the recipient of prestigious grants, including the Tan Kah Kee Postgraduate Scholarship (2015), the FJ Benjamin-Singapore Symphony Orchestra Bursary (2013) and the National Arts Council Arts Scholarship (2011-15).
Churen currently teaches at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music as an Artist Faculty and was previously an Academic Faculty at Yale-NUS College. She is the founder of the Classical Music Adventures initiative, a series of interactive classical music shows that work with community venues.
Her past teachers include Albert Tiu, Bernard Lanskey, Paul Liang, Peter Frankl and Hung-Kuan Chen.
South China Morning Post: Brief but fruitful musical encounter
Dr Chang Tou Liang
5 SEP 2017
"The first half featured the popular Rachmaninov concerto with young Singaporean pianist Li Churen in the demanding solo role. From the intent and demeanour of its opening chords on the Bosendorfer Imperial Grand, one could tell the confident and self-assured Li was going to put her personal stamp on the old warhorse."
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: A MUSICAL AFFAIR
Metropolitan Festival Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall/Sunday
The title of this concert was probably derived from the 1945 David Lean-directed black-and-white movie Brief Encounter, in which Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto featured prominently in the soundtrack.
It, however, accurately describes the musical collaboration between musicians from Singapore and Austria in this concert, organised by local non-profit organisation Global Cultural Alliance.
The first half featured the popular Rachmaninov concerto with young Singaporean pianist Li Churen in the demanding solo role. From the intent and demeanour of its opening chords on the Bosendorfer Imperial Grand, one could tell the confident and self-assured Li was going to put her personal stamp on the old warhorse.
And it was not a self-indulgent spiel, but a totally musical affair in which the music came first.
She comfortably surmounted its striding arpeggios, heavy octaves and tricky fingerwork, ably abetted by the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra conducted by Chan Tze Law.
It was towards the slow movement's close, with only strings accompanying her passionate chords, which provided the concerto's most heartrending moments.
Even when she took liberties in stretching out the final cadenza, it was the blazing conclusion that elicited the longest applause.
The second half was almost double the length of the first and it featured the 60-strong Chorus Sine Nomine from Austria with the same orchestra conducted by Johannes Hiematsberger.
The main work on show was Schubert's Mass No. 6 In E Flat Major (D. 950), composed in the final year of his all-too-brief life.
The choir's size and experience of its singers (it is not a youth choir) ensured that the widest possible range of dynamics was encompassed all through its heavenly length - about 50 minutes, typical of late Schubert.
From the quiet opening Kyrie Eleison expanding to the ecstatic declamations of the Gloria and Sanctus, rising to lofty heights of Brucknerian grandeur, there was little that the mass of voices missed.
Both the women and men's sections were well-matched and homogeneously merged as one.
In the Credo, the three solo voices of tenors Jakob Tobias Pejcic and Florian Ehrlinger and soprano Marie-Antoinette Stabentheiner emerged. The effable lilt in Et Incarnatus Est, with its gentle triplet rhythm, was simply delightful.
A solo quartet completed by alto Daniela Janezic and bass-baritone Daniel Gutmann distinguished in the Benedictus, albeit too briefly, but it was the statuesque Stabentheiner's soaring voice that stood out.
All the fugal sections were splendidly handled by the chorus, no doubt the effort of Hiematsberger's meticulous and expert honing.
Before the mass, which headily closed the concert, there was more easy listening in choral favourites.
Brahms' Wie Lieblich Sind Deine Wohnungen (How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place) from A German Requiem, Faure's Cantique De Jean Racine (sung in French) and Parry's Blest Pair Of Sirens (in English) merely served as the warming-up prelude for the Schubert.
However brief this encounter was, may there be more of such fruitful collaborations of equals.