In the July 2020 issue of Tatler Singapore, I discuss my current projects and hopes for the music scene. I've loved being part of the Generation T community and am honoured to be featured in this month's column. Many thanks for the team at Tatler, espeically Chong Seow Wei for writing this up: https://generationt.asia/leaders/what-matters-to-me-concert-pianist-li-churen
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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.
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