2025 COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE
DR. CHEN YI
LunART is thrilled to announce award-winning Dr. Chen Yi as LunART Festival’s 2025 Composer-in-Residence! In addition to featuring her instrumental works at the LunART Festival 2025 Gala concerts, Chen will conduct the LunART 2025 Composers Hub, a professional development program for emerging composers. Chen will mentor participants to develop practical skills to express their creative ideas, cultivate relationships with performers, and master the art of collaboration through a series of masterclasses, workshops, private lessons, and lectures.
Learn more about the COMPOSERS HUB 2025
BIO
As a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, Dr. Chen Yi* is a recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. She is the Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory since 1998. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 2019.
Born in China, Ms. Chen has received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in the City of New York. Her composition teachers included Prof. Wu Zu-qiang, Prof. Chou Wen-chung, and Prof. Mario Davidovsky. She has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Women’s Philharmonic, Chanticleer, and Aptos Creative Arts Center (93-96) supported by Meet The Composer, and on the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University (96-98).
Fellowships and commissioning awards were received from Guggenheim Foundation (96), American Academy of Arts and Letters (96, 01), Fromm Foundation at Harvard University (94, 23), Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress (97), and National Endowment for the Arts (94). Honors include the first prizes from the Chinese National Composition Competition (85, 12), the Lili Boulanger Award (93), the NYU Sorel Medal Award (96), the CalArts/Alpert Award (97), the UT Eddie Medora King Composition Prize (99), the ASCAP Concert Music Award (01), the Elise Stoeger Prize (02) from Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Friendship Ambassador Award
from Edgar Snow Fund (02), finalist of the Pulitzer Prize (06), the UMKC Kauffman Award in Artistry/Scholarship and Faculty Service (06, 12, 19), the Lifetime Achievement Award for Choral Music from the World Youth & Children Choral Artists Association (22), the Outstanding Alumni Award from the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music (23) and the UMKC Chancellor’s Award for Career Contributions to the University (23). Honorary Doctorates are from Lawrence University (02), Baldwin-Wallace College (08), University of Portland (09), The New School University (10), and the University of Hartford (16). She has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor in major conservatories in China since 2006.
Her music is published by Theodore Presser Company, performed worldwide, and recorded on Bis, New Albion, CRI, Teldec (w/ Grammy Award for Colors of Love), New World (w/ NPR Top 10 Classical Music Album Award for Sound of the Five), Albany, Naxos, BMOP/sound, Delos, Angel, Nimbus, Bridge, Cala, Avant, Atma, Hugo, Koch International Classics, Centaur, Eroica, Capstone, Quartz, Oehms, Etcetera, Navona, Cedille, Innova, XAS, XUAR, Usk, Cavalli, AMP, Mark, Con Brio, Tonar, Equilibrium, Paradisum, Soundbrush, Profil, OUR, Solfa, Luminescence, Cavi-Music, Chanticleer Records, Decca Classics, and China Record Co. among others.
* Chen is her family name. Yi is her personal name. Chen Yi can be referred to as Dr. Chen, Prof. Chen, Ms. Chen, or Chen Yi, but not Dr. Yi, Prof. Yi, or Ms. Yi.