Zhuojun Chen
Born in Taiyuan, Zhuojun CHEN began her first steps in music at the age of four and was already scoring prizes as early as ten at the Xing Hai competition as well as the Yue Fu competition in China. This early success led her to meet great masters of the piano like Jiang Li Ping and Xu Zhong at the Conservatory of Wuhan. When she scored first in the piano examination of Shanxi, she chose to continue perfecting and developing her skills with her early teacher Cao Yi and then graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree at the College of Music, University of Shanxi. During this time, she also had the chance to study with famous Chinese pianists Chen Yin Li, Yang Jun, Guan Chang Xin.
Her journey into the musical world took a whole new direction when she met Klaus Baessler at a Masterclass in Taiyuan. Under his guidance in Berlin, her deep sensitivity, contrasting sound and inner singing reached an even higher degree of mastery. Her time in Germany was flourishing with opportunities : from the Konzerthalls in Berlin to the Klavierabends in Hamburg, she jumped from stage to stage only to receive the greatest praise from the audience. She then took a step back from the scene and went to the International College of Music in Hamburg to refine and distillate the art of piano with Johanna Wiedenbach, Oliver Kern and Wolfgang Wagenhäuser.
The latest step in her musical pilgrimage was in Liège, Belgium. She graduated with a Master’s Degree in Piano Performance summa cum laude under the tutelage of Jean Schils, François Thiry, Etienne Rappe and Christophe Meunier at the Royal Conservatory of Liege. At the same time, she discovered a fiery passion for chamber music, playing with talented musicians like Vincent Royer, François Deppe, Audrey Gallez, Mia Elezovic, only to name a few. Her ventures into chamber music led her to work on the viola version of the Adagio and Allegro from Schumann with Vincent Royer, delve into the original version of the First Trio from Brahms with Audrey Gallez and Olivier Vanderschaeghe, who also invited her to play Mendelssohn’s Trios by their side. Targeting new challenges, she won the First Prize in the International Music Competition of France in Paris and more recently the First Medal with honours in the International Music Competition in Brest, in Four-Hands Category with Jean Hu. Spring 2019 gave her the opportunity to play Mozart’s delightful Concerto For Two Pianos with Jean-Noël Hammal Orchestra under Patrick Baton’s conducting. Willing to push her boundaries even further, she attended the International Summer Academy of Nice to meet the prestigious American pianist Daniel Pollack whose teaching opened a new way of understanding.
The young pianist Zhuojun CHEN brings together the Orient and the Occident, melding in her music the charm, spirituality, prodigious technique from the East with the elegance, rationality and profound musicality from the West.
