MIDDLEBURY — The Middlebury Performing Arts Series opens its winter 2021 virtual season with pianist Gloria Chien — an equally acclaimed performer, concert presenter and educator. She will perform works by Field, Liszt and Mendelssohn in a free, virtual concert broadcast on Friday, Jan. 22, at 7:30 p.m.
Chien is no stranger to Middlebury audiences, having previously appeared on the Mahaney Arts Center stage with Sophie Shao and Friends, and as part of our virtual programming last fall. She is also Co-Artistic Director of Vermont’s Lake Champlain Music Festival.
About the Artist
Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has a diverse musical life as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She was selected by the Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year. She made her orchestral debut at the age of 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard and performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. In recent seasons she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Phillips Collection, the Kissinger Sommer festival, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is an alumna of CMS’s Bowers Program.
In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series at the Hunter Museum of American Art in downtown Chattanooga that has become one of Tennessee’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed Director of the Chamber Music Institute at the Music@Menlo festival, a post she held for the next decade. In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as Co-Artistic Director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vt. The duo serve as the new Artistic Directors at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Ore.
Chien received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music as a student of Russell Sherman and Wha-Kyung Byun. She is an artist-in-residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn. and is a Steinway Artist.
Chien will perform Friday, Jan. 22, at 7:30 p.m. The broadcast and live chat can be accessed online at the Mahaney Arts Center’s Digital Stages, via go.middlebury.edu/digitalstages. Pre-registration available at go.middlebury.edu/pas. The performance is free and open to all. For more information call (802) 443-MIDD (6433) or visit  middlebury.edu/arts.