Frederic Chiu

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Frederic Chiu is a Chinese-American Classical concert pianist.

[edit] Education

Chiu studied music and computer science at Indiana University, then pursued his musical studies in New York at the Juilliard School. During his studies he won numerous piano competitions, including the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Piano Competition and the Music Teachers National Association Competition, both in 1984. He was awarded the American Pianist Association Fellowship (formerly known as the Beethoven Foundation).

[edit] Career

He moved to France for 12 years, beginning his career without entering the usual circuit of international piano competitions. His recording career began in 1991, with the well-received release of a program of piano transcriptions. He followed that with a large project of recording the complete Piano Sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev. His recorded repertoire includes Mendelssohn, Rossini, Chopin, Liszt, Grieg, Brahms, Ravel, Decaux, Schoenberg, Schubert and Prokofiev. He recorded the Liszt transcription for solo piano of the Beethoven Symphony #5.

In 1993, he entered the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where his exclusion from the final round created enormous media coverage. He was invited to play more and more in the United States, where he eventually returned to live.

Highlights of his performances include concerts with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Hartford Symphony, the Orchestre de Bretagne of France, the China National Symphony, and the Taipei National Symphony. He has played recitals in many major cities in Europe, Asia, Northern Africa, South America and North America.

He has given master classes at major universities and music schools around the world. Frederic Chiu also created a series of workshops entitled "Deeper Piano Studies" that approach piano playing through non-traditional methods uniting different philosophies of music, performance and learning.

Chiu is a Yamaha Artist.