Time Out New York shouts "Hot contemporary pianist Jenny Q Chai spins Roulette with solo works by composers that include Wolfgang Rihm, Ives, Cage and Ligeti!"
First prize winner of the Keys to the Future Contemporary Piano Festival and recipient of DAAD Arts and Performance award in 2010, Jenny Q Chai is a pianist specializing in music of the last two centuries. Her recent lecture on Debussy and Ligeti Etudes has earned a great response in the musical Academia. She has performed in major concert halls in the U.S. including Carnegie Hall with Curtis Symphony Orchestra under Andrea Previn, Steinway Hall and Rockefeller Center in New York, Kimmel Center, Academy of Music, Field's Hall in Philadelphia, Kneisle Hall in Maine, Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and Kravis Center in Florida. She has also toured in China and Korea. In Europe she has performed in Darmsdadt International Festival for New Music, The Gaudeamus New Music Festival, Amsterdam, The Logos Tetrahedron Concert Hall, Ghent, Palau de la Música, Barcelona, among others. Jenny Q Chai is an active competitor in the circuit of international piano competitions. Her awards include Logos Award 2008, Kil's International Piano Competition in Sweden; Steinway Young Artist International Competition and Five Towns Art & Music Foundation International Piano Competition in New York, among many others. In Ghent, Belgium, she was given the Logos Award for the best performance of 2008.
Works written for her which she has premiered include Exercise in Deism by John Slover , Intimate Rejection by Ashley Fu-Tsun Wang and Scatura Nera by Jean-Olivier Begin. Ms. Chai introduced the prepared piano to a Chinese audience with the world premiere of Mallet Dance by John Slover in Shanghai Concert Hall. New works soon to be performed by Ms. Chai include Victoria Jordanovas five pieces followed by a recording released in 2010, a tour with Musikfabrik in Germany and a tour on the theme of Norwegian composers in Germany and Norway. Ms. Chais 2010 engagements include solo performances at the Tank Experimental Music Center, Roulette, Phillips Collections Sunday Concert Series, South Nyack Recital Series and Manhattan School of Music in the U.S.; Muziekcentrum De Toonzaal and Galerie Marzee in the Netherlands; Logos in Belgium, a tour in Norway, a tour with contemporary ensemble Musikfabrik and six performances with Ensemble 20/21 in Germany, among others. Three recordings of Ms. Chai will be release on Arpaviva, 8bells and the Deutschlandfunk in 2010.
Jenny Q Chai has been covered on major medium throughout China, such as XMWB News, JF Daily, Laodong News, SHM Daily, Shanghai Morning Post, Shanghai Evening Post, Shanghai Culture, SHXB News, XWWB News; magazines such as Music Friends and China Women; broadcasting interviews on contemporary music and concert reviews on music channel of Chinese National TV Station and SMG Radio Station. Other medium attentions include Time Out New York, Valladolid Newspaper, Cologne major newspapers and other new music journals and sites such as Sequenza21 and the Arts Journal.
Ms. Chai earned her Bachelor's degree at Curtis Institute of Music and her Master's degree at Manhattan School of Music where she is a D.M.A. candidate . From October 2009, Ms. Chai has taken up advanced studies with pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard in the Musikhoschule Köln Neu Musik Interpretation program.
