EVELYN CHIH-YIH CHAN 陳秩怡
soprano / artistic director / researcher / lecturer
Now based in San Diego, California after twenty years in Paris, Evelyn Chih-Yih Chan was born in Taiwan of Chinese parents originally from Guangdong (Canton). She began piano lessons at the age of four with her mother, Helena Chung Chan, one of the first organists from China via Hong Kong. She is also the granddaughter of Alice Yao-Hui Li Chung, one of the first ‘liberated’ women of China who had won the National Piano Competition during the 1920s while a student in Beijing.
Ms. Chan started singing in a children’s choir when she was seven. She also studied the flute and the violin before emigrating to the USA with her family at age 15. While an undergraduate at Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire), she hesitated between mathematics and music but finally graduated with highest distinction in the music major, after spending junior year abroad in Vienna on “music foreign study”. She then received a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music (Boston), where she held a scholarship in voice and an assistantship in vocal accompaniment simultaneously. After further studies in New York with Eleanor Steber, she taught voice and coached chamber music at Lake Forest College (Illinois) before moving to France in 1991.
In 1994, Ms. Chan was hailed as a “Fauré singer par excellence” at the International Academy of the Périgord Noir Festival in France. The following year, she gave the French premiere of 11 lieder by Franz Schreker (1878 Monaco - 1934 Berlin) and was invited to found the International Association of the Friends of Franz Schreker (FFS) in 1997. That same year, she also gave a recital at Dartmouth as part of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of coeducation at the formerly all-male Ivy university.
In 1999, Ms. Chan produced a double CD of lieder and chamber music of Karl Weigl (1881 Vienna - 1949 New York) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of the Austrian composer, and was invited to join the Karl Weigl Foundation (California) as artistic advisor as well as a board member. The following year, she gave the British premiere of a number of lieder and songs from film scores by Polish Jewish composer Karol Rathaus (1895 Tarnopol, Poland - 1954 Queens, NY), and was promptly invited to join the International Centre for Suppressed Music (ICSM) at the Jewish Music Institute of the University of London/Russell Square as a member of its Advisory Board. In 2001, Ms. Chan was presented by musica reanimata, a German society dedicated to reviving works by composers banned by the Nazis, and performed for the first time in Berlin.
During 2002-2004, Ms. Chan dedicated herself to in-depth research on Austrian composers who had emigrated to the USA during World War II, culminating in the project Lyricism in the 20th Century: the ‘Other’ Second Viennese School and U.S. Exiles, which has become a major feature in her work. In May 2003, her recording of Trost (1934) by Karl Weigl for soprano and string quartet was featured as the only chamber work on a commemorative double CD issued by Universal Music to accompany the catalogue of the exhibit Vienna: Jews and the City of Music, 1870-1938 at the Jewish Museum of Vienna. In February 2004, Ms. Chan was invited to give a special presentation at Columbia University before the same exhibit opened in New York.
In summer 2005 when the Salzburg Festival featured Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten (The Branded Ones) as its opening production, Ms. Chan was invited to give a “pre-lecture” in English on Schreker and the opera, sponsored by the American Friends of the Salzburg Festival. As co-president of the Dartmouth Club of France, she also organized the first-ever “Pan-European Dartmouth Reunion” parallel to this event in Salzburg, bringing together Dartmouth alumni and friends not only from Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Switzerland but also from the USA.
Since 2006 Ms. Chan has appeared regularly at the Musikalischer Sommer Festival in Ostfriesland, Germany, where she was invited to present in 2008 a preview of the 2009 Taipei International Lyricism in 20th Century Music Festival of which she was artistic director.
Ms. Chan’s repertoire runs the gamut from Couperin’s First Tenebrae Lesson to music of our day, ever since she first got the contemporary “bug” while working with Morton Feldman at age 18. While she considers herself “a musician whose instrument happens to be the voice” and is a dedicated concert singer by temperament, it is her privilege indeed honor to be promoting all great works that have a rightful place in the history of music - whether she sings [in] them or not!
Now based in San Diego, California after twenty years in Paris, Evelyn Chih-Yih Chan was born in Taiwan of Chinese parents originally from Guangdong (Canton). She began piano lessons at the age of four with her mother, Helena Chung Chan, one of the first organists from China via Hong Kong. She is also the granddaughter of Alice Yao-Hui Li Chung, one of the first ‘liberated’ women of China who had won the National Piano Competition during the 1920s while a student in Beijing.
Ms. Chan started singing in a children’s choir when she was seven. She also studied the flute and the violin before emigrating to the USA with her family at age 15. While an undergraduate at Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire), she hesitated between mathematics and music but finally graduated with highest distinction in the music major, after spending junior year abroad in Vienna on “music foreign study”. She then received a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music (Boston), where she held a scholarship in voice and an assistantship in vocal accompaniment simultaneously. After further studies in New York with Eleanor Steber, she taught voice and coached chamber music at Lake Forest College (Illinois) before moving to France in 1991.
In 1994, Ms. Chan was hailed as a “Fauré singer par excellence” at the International Academy of the Périgord Noir Festival in France. The following year, she gave the French premiere of 11 lieder by Franz Schreker (1878 Monaco - 1934 Berlin) and was invited to found the International Association of the Friends of Franz Schreker (FFS) in 1997. That same year, she also gave a recital at Dartmouth as part of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of coeducation at the formerly all-male Ivy university.
In 1999, Ms. Chan produced a double CD of lieder and chamber music of Karl Weigl (1881 Vienna - 1949 New York) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of the Austrian composer, and was invited to join the Karl Weigl Foundation (California) as artistic advisor as well as a board member. The following year, she gave the British premiere of a number of lieder and songs from film scores by Polish Jewish composer Karol Rathaus (1895 Tarnopol, Poland - 1954 Queens, NY), and was promptly invited to join the International Centre for Suppressed Music (ICSM) at the Jewish Music Institute of the University of London/Russell Square as a member of its Advisory Board. In 2001, Ms. Chan was presented by musica reanimata, a German society dedicated to reviving works by composers banned by the Nazis, and performed for the first time in Berlin.
During 2002-2004, Ms. Chan dedicated herself to in-depth research on Austrian composers who had emigrated to the USA during World War II, culminating in the project Lyricism in the 20th Century: the ‘Other’ Second Viennese School and U.S. Exiles, which has become a major feature in her work. In May 2003, her recording of Trost (1934) by Karl Weigl for soprano and string quartet was featured as the only chamber work on a commemorative double CD issued by Universal Music to accompany the catalogue of the exhibit Vienna: Jews and the City of Music, 1870-1938 at the Jewish Museum of Vienna. In February 2004, Ms. Chan was invited to give a special presentation at Columbia University before the same exhibit opened in New York.
In summer 2005 when the Salzburg Festival featured Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten (The Branded Ones) as its opening production, Ms. Chan was invited to give a “pre-lecture” in English on Schreker and the opera, sponsored by the American Friends of the Salzburg Festival. As co-president of the Dartmouth Club of France, she also organized the first-ever “Pan-European Dartmouth Reunion” parallel to this event in Salzburg, bringing together Dartmouth alumni and friends not only from Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Switzerland but also from the USA.
Since 2006 Ms. Chan has appeared regularly at the Musikalischer Sommer Festival in Ostfriesland, Germany, where she was invited to present in 2008 a preview of the 2009 Taipei International Lyricism in 20th Century Music Festival of which she was artistic director.
Ms. Chan’s repertoire runs the gamut from Couperin’s First Tenebrae Lesson to music of our day, ever since she first got the contemporary “bug” while working with Morton Feldman at age 18. While she considers herself “a musician whose instrument happens to be the voice” and is a dedicated concert singer by temperament, it is her privilege indeed honor to be promoting all great works that have a rightful place in the history of music - whether she sings [in] them or not!