Meng-Chieh Liu to NEC Faculty

NEC Announces Appointment to Piano Faculty of Meng-Chieh Liu

Versatile Pianist Equally At Home in Solo, Chamber Music

Praised for his “Mature, Profound, Direct…Technically Immaculate” Playing

New England Conservatory is delighted to announce the appointment to the faculty of Taiwanese-born pianist Meng-Chieh Liu. Currently on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music and Roosevelt University, Liu will join NEC in September.

A recipient of the prestigious 2002 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Philadelphia Musical Fund Society Career Advancement Award, Liu first made headlines in 1993 as a 21-year-old student at Curtis when he substituted on three hours’ notice for André Watts at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. The concert earned high acclaim from critics and audience alike, and was followed by a number of widely praised performances, including a recital at the Kennedy Center and a concert on the Philadelphia All-Star Series. Already an accomplished artist at the time, Liu had made his New York orchestral debut two years earlier.

Equally at home in solo and chamber music performance, Liu has appeared throughout the world as in recitals and with orchestras under conductors Christoph Eschenbach, Gustavo Dudamel and Alan Gilbert.  His solo recitals have been critically praised and, indeed, after his all-Schubert recital in Boston in 2013, David Moran wrote in the Boston Musical-Intelligencer, “And so continues this spring’s wondrous piano Schubertiade, and to the short list of topmost interpreters—meaning mature, profound, direct, not only technically immaculate, we now must add Meng-Chieh Liu.”

As a strong advocate of chamber music, the pianist performs in music festivals across the globe and has worked with international musicians Shmuel Ashkenasi, David Soyer, Bernard Greenhouse, James Buswell, Wendy Warner as well as the Borromeo and St. Lawrence Quartets. Liu also collaborates with artists in varied disciplines, such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and the White Oak Dance Project, among other dance companies. His concerts have been heard over the airwaves around the world, and a biography on his life was broadcast on Taiwanese National Television. A member of the Chicago Chamber Players since 2009, he now serves as Artistic Co-Director.

Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Liu began his piano studies early, and at age thirteen was accepted by The Curtis Institute of Music to study with Jorge Bolet, Claude Frank, and Eleanor Sokoloff, and received first prizes in the Stravinsky, Asia Pacific and Mieczyslaw Munz piano competitions.

Photo by Andrew Hurlbut

For further information, check the NEC Website.
or call the NEC Concert Line at 617-585-1122.  NEC’s Jordan Hall, Brown Hall, Williams Hall and the Keller Room are located at 30 Gainsborough St., corner of Huntington Ave. Pierce Hall is located at 241 St. Botolph St. between Gainsborough and Mass Ave.

ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
A cultural icon approaching its 150th anniversary in 2017, New England Conservatory (NEC) is recognized worldwide as a leader among music schools. Located in Boston, Massachusetts, on the Avenue of the Arts in the Fenway Cultural District, NEC offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. NEC alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC-trained musicians and faculty.

NEC is the oldest independent school of music in the United States. Founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee, an American music educator, choral conductor and organist, its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, NEC features training in classical, jazz, and Contemporary Improvisation. Graduate and post-graduate programs supplement these core disciplines with orchestral conducting and professional chamber music training. Additional programs, such as the Sistema Fellows, a professional training program for top postgraduate musicians and music educators that creates careers connected to music, youth, and social change, and Entrepreneurial Musicianship, a cutting-edge program integrating professional and personal skills development into the musical training of students to better develop the skills and knowledge needed to create one’s own musical opportunities, also enhance the NEC experience.

Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Programs and Partnerships Program, the Conservatory provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, and adults. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music, jazz, and Contemporary Improvisation. Currently more than 750 young artists from 46 states and 39 foreign countries attend NEC on the college level; 1,400 young students attend on the Preparatory level; and 325 adults participate in the Continuing Education program.

The only conservatory in the United States designated a National Historic Landmark, NEC presents more than 900 free concerts each year. Many of these take place in Jordan Hall (which shares National Historic Landmark status with the school), world-renowned for its superb acoustics and beautifully restored interior. In addition to Jordan Hall, more than a dozen performance spaces of various sizes and configurations are utilized to meet the requirements of the unique range of music performed at NEC, from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to big band jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre or Paramount Center in Boston, and a semi-staged performance in Jordan Hall. This past 2012-2013 season, the operas produced were Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, and Rossini’s La Gazzetta.

NEC is co-founder and educational partner of From the Top, a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.

Contact: Ellen Pfeifer
Senior Communications Specialist
New England Conservatory
290 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA 02115
617-585-1143
Ellen.pfeifer@necmusic.edu