Sean Chen
Host - Sounds Like with Sean ChenA “thoughtful musician well beyond his years” (The Republic), pianist Sean Chen shares his “alluring, colorfully shaded renditions” (New York Times) and “genuinely sensitive” (LA Times) playing with audiences around the world in solo and chamber recitals, concerto performances, and masterclasses, after having won the 2013 American Piano Awards, placing third at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and being named a 2015 Annenberg Fellow. Mr. Chen is the Jack Strandberg/Missouri Endowed Chair Associate Professor of Piano at the UMKC Conservatory.
Mr. Chen resides in the suburbs of Kansas City with his wife, Betty, a violinist in the Kansas City Symphony, and their daughters Ella and Maeve. When not at the piano, Mr. Chen enjoys tinkering with computers, and exploring math, science, and programming. Mr. Chen is a Steinway Artist and is managed by Jonathan Wentworth Associates, Ltd.
More at seanchenpiano.com.
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One note, is never just one note. When you hear a single note on the piano for example, what you’re actually hearing is a stack of frequencies - a family of related tones known as the harmonic series -
Composer Robert Schumann loved puzzles and secret codes. In his music, he snuck in secret love letters, and paid tribute to musical heroes. -
John and Yoko...and Ludwig? Did Ludwig van Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata inspire John Lennon to write "Because" from the Abbey Road album? The similarities are fascinating. -
For Gustav Mahler a symphony must embrace everything: life, death, nature and love. -
Barry Manilow thought he had come up with an original musical idea, but later realized it was Frédéric Chopin's all along. -
Video game composers like Koji Kondo have a unique challenge: the music must function on repeat—looping, yet foreshadowing. If you take Kondo's music out of its digital soundscape, does it evoke Satie or Chopin? -
Is "Chopsticks" the most famous piece of classical music ever written? “The Celebrated Chop Waltz,” as it was originally titled, was composed by a 16 year old girl. It was her only published work, but boy what an impact. -
Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven created poetry at the piano, but what does it have to do with Pterodactyls? -
From rippling water to beams of light, composers like Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy figured out how to translate the visual into something you can hear. -
There’s no controlling the weather, but composers attempt to harness its power to create musical drama.
