Shih-Hui Chen

Shih-Hui Chen is a Taiwanese composer who lives and works in the United States.

Chen Shih-hui (陳士惠) was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and came to the United States in 1982 to study for a master's degree from Northern Illinois University and a doctoral degree from Boston University.

After receiving her DMA in Music Composition, Shih-Hui Chen took a position at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University where she is currently Professor of Music Composition and Theory.

Chen also serves on Asia Society Texas Center's Performing Arts & Culture Committee and is the director of 21C: Classical, Contemporary, and Cross-Cultural Music Festival at Rice University.

Chen Shih-hui's work has been performed widely throughout the U.S. and abroad, including Taiwan, China, Germany, and Italy.

In 1999, she received an American Academy in Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000, and a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2007.

A citation accompanying her 2007 Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters states, “Among the composers of Asian descent living in the U.S.A.,Shih-Hui Chen is most successful in balancing the very refined spectral traditions of the East with the polyphonic practice of Western art-music.

In a seamless narrative, her beautiful music, always highly inventive and expressive, is immediately as appealing as it is demanding and memorable.”

In 2010, Chen received a Fulbright Fellowship to study traditional Chinese Music, Nanguan music, and music of Taiwanese Indigenous peoples.

Chen Shih-hui composes for orchestra, chamber ensemble, voice, and solo instruments.

She also composes music for theater and film.

Her music blends both her Western training and cultural heritage.