Katherine Chi

Katherine Chi has established herself as one of Canada’s fastest rising stars in classical music and her keen musical intelligence and a powerful arsenal of techniques define her as piano virtuoso.

Chi has performed throughout Europe and North America to great acclaim, including her 2003 New York recital debut, about which The New York Times raved, “Chi displayed a keen musical intelligence and a powerful arsenal of technique.”

The Globe and Mail described her as “. . . the most sensational but, better, the most unfailingly cogent and compelling Prokofiev’s Third I have heard in years.” 

 

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev, by the way, is a Russian composer who mastered numerous musical genres and came to be admired as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Chi gave her debut recital at age nine. A year later she was accepted to The Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Seymour Lipkin.

She continued studies with Russell Sherman and Wha Kyung Byun at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she received her Master’s degree and Graduate and Artist Diplomas. She later studied for two years at the International Piano Foundation in Como, Italy, and at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne.

Chi was a prizewinner at the 1998 Busoni International Piano Competition and was the first Canadian and first woman to win Canada’s Honens International Piano Competition. Her debut recording, of works by Beethoven and Rachmaninov, was released in 2003 on Canada’s Arktos label.

Chi has also given memorable recitals in Hamburg, Hanover, Milan, Rome and Salzburg.
She has appeared with the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver, Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, Toronto Sinfonia, and the Alabama, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Philadelphia, Quebec, Thunder Bay, Victoria Symphony Orchestras and at a festivals including Aldeburgh, Banff, Canada’s Festival of the Sound, Launadière, Marlboro, Osnabrück Kammermusik, Germany’s Ruhr, Santander Summer Music, and Festival Vancouver.

Chi will perform in a concert entitled Music of the Masters: Bach & Haydn on Apr 18 and 19 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC.

Visit: www.vancouversymphony.ca or call 604.684.9100 for more information. The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at the University of British Columbia has earned an international reputation for its striking design and stellar acoustics.

Artists, critics and patrons alike are unanimous in their praise of the multi-faceted facility, winning it a place among North America’s premier performing arts venues.