Chelsea Chen’s dynamic playing has taken her to the far corners of the world. Her solo concerts offer a unique mix of traditional organ repertoire along with piano/orchestral transcriptions and contemporary music. The Los Angeles Times has praised her “rare musicality” and “lovely lyrical grandeur,” and a compositional style that is “charming” and “irresistible.”
Chelsea has performed with numerous ensembles including the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Singapore Chinese Orchestra (a traditional Chinese instruments ensemble) and the Lou Harrison Festival Rutgers Orchestra at Trinity Wall Street in Manhattan. Highlights of the past season included solo concerts at Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, CA and Overture Hall in Madison, WI, as well as a joint performance with the brass of the Philadelphia Orchestra at Girard College in Philadelphia, PA. Upcoming engagements include solo concerts at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and at St. Jacobi in Hamburg.
Ms. Chen originally hails from San Diego, where her formative music teachers were organists Leslie Robb (St. Paul’s Lutheran, San Diego) and Monte Maxwell (US Naval Academy, Annapolis) and pianists Baruch Arnon (New York City), Jane Bastien and Lori Bastien Vickers (San Diego). She studied under Paul Jacobs and John Weaver at The Juilliard School in New York, where she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. She also won the John Erskine Prize for academic and artistic achievement, awarded to one graduate per year. After college she moved to Taiwan under a Fulbright scholarship, whereupon she collected folk songs and wrote organ solo and chamber music. She returned to the U.S. to study with Thomas Murray at Yale University, where she earned an Artist Diploma. In 2009, Wayne Leupold Editions published her composition “Taiwanese Suite” to great acclaim.
Ms. Chen has recorded multiple CDs: Reveries (2011) at Bethel University, Live at Heinz Chapel at the 2005 Convention of the American Institute of Organbuilders, Eastern Treasures (2010) with violinist Lewis Wong, Live at Coral Ridge (2014), and Explorations for Cello and Organ (2018) with cellist Joseph Lee. Her playing has been aired on CNN.com, “Pipedreams” from American Public Media, Hawaii Public Radio, and Taiwan’s Good News Radio. Committed to new music, she has premiered works by composers throughout the world including Ola Gjeilo (Norway/USA), Yui Kitamura (Japan/USA), Paul Desenne (Venezuela), Roderick Gorby (USA), Vincent Rone (USA), and Viviane Waschbüsch (Germany). Her compositions are available exclusively from Wayne Leupold Editions, Inc.
From 2013-2017, Ms. Chen was Artist-in-Residence at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, where she performed and directed the Concert Series. At present, she serves as Artist-in-Residence at Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.
“Rare musicality and lovely lyrical grandeur”
“Charming and irresistible compositional style”
– Los Angeles Times
“New York organist Chelsea Chen [had] urgency, precision and coloration in her virtuoso performance”
– The Hunstville Times
“Chen’s Emmanuel Suite delighted the audience with its rhythmic verve, folkloric accents, and flourishing lyricism.”
– Saarbrücker Zeitung (Germany)
“An artist of great technical and dramatic skill…she is personable, humble and simply appears to be one with the instrument.”
– Palm Beach Daily News
“The range of tonal colors and variety of nuance in texture and style she brought to each work revealed a depth of musicality.”
– Kansas City Star
“Chen drove [the Spreckels organ] like a sports car. She had the beast, and the audience, eating out of her hand. The organ sounded scary good. You could swear the instrument was alive.”
– San Diego Union Tribune
“Her brilliant technique, natural musicality, and elegant body language allowed the audience to experience the joy of her music. The pipe organ — surprise! — can really party.”
– Xiu-Wen Chen, Director, Taiwan Theological Seminary Music Department
“Every piston she pushes, every manual change, every tiny nudge of the shades is a fluid part of her music … Every note perfectly attacked and released. Not fussy, just perfect.”
– Journal of American Organbuilding