Yu-Chun Chien was born in Taiwan. She studied composition at Manhattan School of Music in New York (USA) and at Taipei National University of the Arts in Taipei (Taiwan). Some of her most influential teachers have been Reiko Füting, Susan Botti and Chung-Kun Hung.
Yu-Chun Chien is Visiting Teaching Assistant Professor at West Virginia University. Previously, she was appointed coordinator of aural skills and coordinator of theory tutoring program at Manhattan School of Music, where she served as a teaching fellow in the College theory department and a faculty member in the Precollege Division.
Yu-Chun Chien has received several prizes, awards, scholarships, grants and commissions, including the Second Prize, the Orchestra’s Choice and the Audience’s Choice in the Orchestra Composition Competitions held by the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra; the Distinction Awards in the Solo/Duet Composition Competition and Choral Composition Competition organized by the National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center; the Representative Piece in the Asian Composers League Conference and Festival; the “Call for Score” Commission Award from the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra; the Scholarship for Overseas Study from the Ministry of Education in Taiwan; the Grant from the National Culture and Arts Foundation; and Nina Elizabeth Nilssen Scholarship Fund.
Yu-Chun Chien’s compositions and arrangements have been published and performed in Taiwan, the United States, Germany, France and the Netherlands. She has appeared at festivals and residencies such as June in Buffalo, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, impuls International Ensembles and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music, Asian Composers League Conference and Festival, Etchings Festival, the Loretto Project, Crosstown Arts and ICEBERG New Music: Composer’s Collective. She has collaborated with some of the world’s prestigious orchestras, ensembles and musicians, including the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Signal, loadbang, MIVOS quartet, Longleash piano trio, the Contemporaneous ensemble, the ECCE ensemble, Blueshift Ensemble, David Gilbert, Brad Lubman, Pablo Rus Broseta, Georges-Emmanuel Schneider, William Land, Adrián Blanco, Jenny Lin, and many others. She has participated in master classes with Brian Ferneyhough, Pierluigi Billone, Mark Andre, Beat Furrer, Isabel Mundry, Franck Bedrossian, Raphael Cendo, Fabien Lévy, Steven Stucky, Eivind Buene, Henrik Hellstenius, David Dzubay, David Felder, Josh Levine, Jeffrey Mumford and Joel Hoffman. As a composer, Yu-Chun constantly searches for new means of expression, which can be transformed in personal and intimate ways.
Yu-Chun Chien received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from Manhattan School of Music in New York, and her Bachelor of Music degree from Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan.
His own work appears on CDs from Mode, EMF, New Focus Recordings, Lovely Music, and Naxos. His choral music is published by Boosey and Hawkes. He taught at Manhattan School of Music for thirty years, retiring as Chair of the Composition Department in 2013.