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Jenny Q Chai

An artist of singular vision, pianist Jenny Q Chai is widely renowned for her

ability to illuminate musical connections throughout the centuries. With radical

joie de vivre and razor-sharp intention, Chai creates layered multimedia

programs which explore and unite elements of science, nature, fashion, and art.

The New Yorker describes Chai as “a pianist whose dazzling facility is matched

by her deep musicality.”

Chai’s instinctive understanding of new music is complemented by a deep

grounding in core repertoire, with special affinity for Schumann, Scarlatt

Beethoven, Bach, Debussy, and Ravel. She is a noted interpreter of 20th-century

masters Cage, Messiaen, and Ligeti, and her career is threaded through with

strong relationships and close collaborations with a range of notable contemporary

composers, including Tan Dun, Jarosław Kapuściński, Andy Akiho, Pamela Z,

Lukas Ligeti, Cindy Cox, Annie Gosfield and György Kurtág. With a deft poeti

touch, Chai weaves this wide-ranging repertoire into a gorgeous and lucid

musical tapestry. Chai is also a vital champion and early tester of the groundbreaking

synchronous score following software program, Antescofo. Developed at IRCAM by

scientist Arshia Cont, the software offers a real time computer and animation respons

to live performance elements, enabling performers to create multimedia presentations

of AI sophisticated and expressive fluency. Chai explored and helped hone Antescof

in residence at IRCAM alongside frequent collaborator Jarosław Kapuściński, and has

since toured internationally with the software offering multimedia performances i

Shanghai, New York, Havana, and elsewhere. In September 2019, Chai gave a TEDx

Talk titled When Classical Music Meets Technology.

Other notable highlights include her 2024 Shanghai Symphony Hall Audiovisual AI

Concert, 2012 Carnegie Hall recital debut; many

performances at (le) Poisson Rouge, including a 2016 Antescofo-supported

program, Where’s Chopin?; her 2018 Wigmore Hall debut with a program

exploring the relation between color and sound; lectures and recitals at Shanghai

Symphony Hall, Shanghai Concert Hall, and Shanghai Mercedes Benz Arena; a

featured performance at Tan Dun’s International Music Medicine Festival in Qingdao;

the Leo Brouwer Festival in Havana, Cuba; Philippe Manoury’s double-piano concerto,

Zones de turbulences, at the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary

Music with duo partner, pianist Adam Kośmieja and the Polish National Radio

Symphony Orchestra; and much more.



Her immersive approach to music is also channeled into her work with FaceArt Institute

of Music, the Shanghai-based organization she founded and runs, offering musi

education and an international exchange of music and musicians in China and beyond.

In summer 2019, Chai oversees FaceArt’s first ever month-long Co-Creation Summe

Festival, which invites International piano and composition faculty. Additionally, Chai

served on the Board of Directors of the New York City-based contemporary music

organization Ear to Mind, and has published a doctoral dissertation on Marco Stroppa’s

Miniature Estrose which is collected by many schools including Stanford and Harvard

University.

Chai has recorded for labels such as Divine Art, Deutschlandfunk, Naxos, ArpaViva and

MSR. In 2010, she released her debut recording, New York Love Songs, featuring

interpretations of works by Cage and Ives among others, and her most recent

recording, (S)yn(e)sth(e)te, was released by MSR Records in 2017. She can also be

heard on Michael Vincent Waller’s Five Easy Pieces and Cindy Cox’s Hierosgamos. In

2021, her newest album on Bach, Ives and Schumann Kreisleriana received positive

reviews globally. The album was featured by Apple Music as one of its selected best

Classical Music albums.

The recipient of the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust’s 2011 Pianist/Composer Commissionin

Project, the DAAD Arts and Performance award in 2010, Chamber Music America

commissioning award and first prize winner of the Keys to the Future Contemporar

Solo Piano Festival, Jenny Q Chai studied at the Shanghai Music Conservatory, the

Curtis Institute of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and in Cologne University of

Music and Dance. Her teachers include Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Seymour Lipkin,

Solomon Mikowsky, Marilyn Nonken, and Anthony de Mare.

Academically, Chai has given lecture recitals at universities such as Stanford, Harvard,

University of California Berkeley, NYU, Shanghai Conservatory and more.

Chai is a former piano faculty member of the University of California Berkeley, an

alumni mentor at Curtis Institute of Music and an official career mentor at Manhatt

School of Music. In 2022, Chai became Fazioli Global Piano Ambassador.

Chai is a social activist who works passionately on environmental causes through her

music and runs a personal animal shelter. She has rescued over one hundred small

animals in China since the pandemic and is an active donor to many animal rescue

organizations.

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Gil Shaham

Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy Award-winner, also named Musical America’s “Instrumentalist of the Year,” is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.

Highlights of recent years include the acclaimed recording and performances of J.S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin. In the coming seasons in addition to championing these solo works he will join his long time duo partner pianist, Akira Eguchi in recitals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

Appearances with orchestra regularly include the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and San Francisco Symphony as well as multi-year residencies with the Orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart and Singapore. With orchestra, Mr. Shaham continues his exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s,” including the works of Barber, Bartok, Berg, Korngold, Prokofiev, among many others.

Mr. Shaham has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, earning multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Many of these recordings appear on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004. His CDs include 1930s Violin Concertos, Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar’s Violin Concerto, Hebrew Melodies, The Butterfly Lovers and many more. His most recent recording in the series 1930s Violin Concertos Vol. 2, including Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto and Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2, was nominated for a Grammy Award. He will release a new recording of Beethoven and Brahms Concertos with The Knights in 2020.

Mr. Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1971. He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at the age of 7, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic, and the following year, took the first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition. He then became a scholarship student at Juilliard, and also studied at Columbia University.

Gil Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008 he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America. He performs on an Antonio Stradivari violin, Cremona c1719, with the assistance of Rare Violins In Consortium Artists and Benefactors Collaborative, and lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.