Dr. Jenny Q. Chai (Piano '04)
The Curtis alumna, internationally renowned pianist, and contemporary classical music champion recently released her sixth acclaimed album, dedicated to her Curtis teacher, Seymour Lipkin ('37)
Hailed by the New Yorker as “a pianist whose dazzling facility is matched by her deep musicality,” Dr. Jenny Q. Chai (’04) has garnered global accolades for her thrilling performances, radical joie de vivre, and razor-sharp intention since she graduated from Curtis almost two decades ago, released her debut recording New York Love Songs in 2010, and made her 2012 Carnegie Hall debut. Dr. Chai began taking piano lessons at age three, won her first international competition at age twelve, and entered Curtis in 1997 at age thirteen, where she studied with pianist and pedagogue Seymour Lipkin (’37). She is the president and founder of the FaceArt Institute of Music, a Shanghai-based, high-end music training school devoted to the international exchange of music and musicians, and previously served on the board of Ear to Mind, a contemporary music organization in New York. Dr. Chai is currently based in Shanghai and California, where she is a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, she serves as an official career mentor at the Manhattan School of Music, a Curtis Institute alumni mentor, and a Fazioli piano ambassador.
A renowned interpreter and champion of twentieth-century and contemporary works, Dr. Chai, is actively involved in developing new interactive music score software and teaching in China and the United States and was an early tester of the groundbreaking synchronous score following software program, Antescofo. Designed at IRCAM by scientist Arshia Cont, the software offers a real-time computer and animation response to live performance elements, enabling performers to create multimedia presentations of sophisticated and expressive fluency. Dr. Chai explored and helped hone Antescofo in residence at IRCAM alongside frequent collaborator Jarosław Kapuściński and has since toured internationally with the software offering multimedia performances in Shanghai, New York, Havana, and elsewhere. In September 2019, she gave a TEDx Talk in Shanghai titled When Classical Music Meets Technology.
Dr. Chai’s latest critically acclaimed album, Songs of Love, released through Divine Art Recordings Group in the spring of 2022, is a poignant musical tribute to the artistry, legacy, and inspirational guidance of her “musical grandpa,” Seymour Lipkin, who passed away in 2015. Each selection highlights a different connection she had to the school and her musical mentor. The album opens with Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Aria” from the Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, which she heard numerous times from older piano students at Curtis, but did not tackle until recent years. The next selection, Charles Ives’s ‘The Alcotts’ from Piano Sonata No. 2 (‘The Concord’), is an arrangement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and was recommended for her to play by Mr. Lipkin, a Beethoven specialist, to encourage an interest in more contemporary works. The album closes with Robert Schumann’s legendary Kreisleriana, Op. 16, an eight-movement fantasy cycle given to her by Mr. Lipkin to perform in the second half of her 2004 graduation recital at Curtis.
No stranger to accolades, Jenny Q. Chai, has been the recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust’s 2011 Pianist/Composer Commissioning Project, the DAAD Arts and Performance Award in 2010, Chamber Music America commissioning award and first prize winner of the Keys to the Future Contemporary Solo Piano Festival. She also studied at the Manhattan School of Music and Cologne University of Music and Dance. Beyond her studies with Mr. Lipkin, Dr. Chai’s teachers include a list of notable piano luminaries, including Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Solomon Mikowsky, Marilyn Nonken, and Anthony de Mare.
To learn more about Jenny Q. Chai, visit her official website HERE and read a Presto Music interview about Songs of Love HERE.
Photo credits: 1, 4, & 5.) Promo shots for Songs of Love courtesy of Divine Art Recordings Group. 2.) Image courtesy of Jenny Q. Chai’s official Twitter page. 3.) In April of 2023, Dr. Chai returned to Curtis as an alumni mentor—photo courtesy of the artist’s official Facebook page.