Elaine Chew has performed widely as soloist and chamber musician, appearing in concert at venues and festivals such as Los Angeles' Newman Recital Hall, Zipper Hall (Music of Changes series), Boston's Jordan Hall (Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts Recital Series), the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, the Singapore Embassy in Washington D.C. (Embassy Series), and Victoria Concert Hall (President's Charity Concert, soloist with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra). She has also presented lecture recitals at international and national meetings of the American Musicological Society, the International Congress on Musical Signification, and the International Musicological Society.
A proponent of contemporary repertoire, Prof. Chew has premiered compositions by, and worked with, composers such as Peter Child, John Harbison, Chen Yi, Paul Schoenfield, Ivan Tcherepnin, Eric Sawyer, Jose Elizondo, Chris Dench, Alba Potes and Cecilia Heejeong Kim. In 1994, she was one of three pianists selected by John Harbison to accompany Yo-Yo Ma in an open rehearsal of his Cello Concerto. A 1997 grant from the MIT China Program resulted in a field study and numerous concerts on contemporary Chinese piano music. She has recorded Peter Child's Doubles III, written for her and based on songs from her childhood, and his Trio for violin, clarinet and piano (Neuma Records). Her performance of Poulenc's Sextuor with the East Winds Quintet (Lehigh University's faculty wind ensemble) airs frequently on WDIY; her performance of Ivan Tcherepnin's Fêtes - Variations on Happy Birthday can be heard on WGBH's Art of the States program.
She holds diplomas and degrees in piano performance from the Trinity College, London (FTCL, LTCL), and Stanford University; in 1998, she received MIT's prestigious Laya and Jerome Wiesner Award for her contribution to the arts. Born in Buffalo, New York, Elaine Chew spent most of her formative years in Singapore, Stanford (CA) and Cambridge (MA). At age 16, she was the youngest of four finalists to solo with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at the Diners Club Pianist of the Year Competition; and subsequently went on to garner awards at other national competitions. She has studied piano with David Deveau, James Goldsworthy, George Barth, Ong Lip Tat and Goh Lee Choo; chamber music with Marcus Thompson, John Harbison, Peter Marsh, Lynn Chang and Jean Rife; and vocal repertoire with John Oliver and Judith Bettina.
Prof. Chew earned an S.M. and Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.A.S. from Stanford University. Her graduate studies were supported by an Office of Naval Research and the Josephine de Kármán Dissertation fellowships. Her subsequent work has been suported by the National Science Foundation, most notably an NSF Early Career Award and Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, an NSF Information Technology Research grant, and NSF Engineering Research Center Collaborative Agreement grant through the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Currently she is on the faculty in the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering.
Prof. Chew is the first honoree of the Viterbi Early Career Chair, and serves as Research Area Director of IMSC. She founded and heads of the Music Computation and Cognition Laboratory at USC, where she conducts and directs research on music and computing.
updated january 14, 2007
