[slideshow_deploy id=’899′]
BY JOHN SNYDER
OF PASCACK PRESS
EMERSON, NEW JERSEY — Congratulations to borough native Carrie Chen, who on Jan. 7 tickled the ivories with bravura, nailing the Music Teachers National Association Eastern Division Senior Piano Competition.
Now representing the Garden State, she advances as one of seven finalists to compete in MTNA’s National Competition on Sunday, March 18, in Orlando, Florida.
The MTNA National Competitions run during the MTNA National Conference. The winner will land a cash prize and perform at a conference Winners Concert.
A sophomore at the Bergen County Academy for Engineering and Design Technology, Chen, 15, has been studying piano for 11 years, now under Michael Thomopoulos of The Palisades School of Music in Fort Lee.
She’s pulled in top prizes at many international competitions and performed in Spain, France, Poland, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, and Canada.
Closer to home, she’s dazzled at New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall, Steinway Hall, and Carnegie Hall, among others.
Carrie appeared as a Next Generation Artist in Omega Ensemble concerts in New York for six seasons.
She has appeared as guest piano soloist with Orquestra Classica do Centro of Portugal and Galicia Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Spain—and soloed internationally on flute as well.
Her next trip abroad is in July, to Sydney Opera House, which will showcase her flute playing. She performed on flute in Russia last summer: Franz Doppler’s “Hungarian Pastorale Fantasy for flute and piano.”
Beyond her resume, Carrie told Pascack Press in a phone interview that she loves to read about science, taught herself to draw and travels with a sketchbook, speaks French and her parents’ native Chinese (and has a bit of Spanish as well) and loves making friends with other performers.
She’s considering colleges. Her career might incorporate her twin passions: music and engineering. That’s a question she certainly has time to explore.
Carrie spoke with us on a conference call that included her parents—Lin Wang, an insurance company operations manager, and Feng Chen, a software engineer—shortly after a busy school day.
Neither of her parents play an instrument and both say they love that the world is open to their daughter, an only child.
Here’s an abridged version of our conversation with Carrie.
PASCACK PRESS: You’re about to tackle a national piano competition and you’ve played at Carnegie Hall among other top venues. What’s it like to compete at that level?
Carrie Chen: It takes a lot more practice than noncompetitive playing but I like it because it challenges me a lot. I can get a lot more out of the music that I’m learning, and I can enjoy it a lot more when I’m performing.
When I perform in competition, when I’m preparing, I have to go into a lot more detail and really analyze the music so that I can properly deliver the music to the audience and the judges.
When I’m discovering all these details in the music I end up enjoying the music a lot more because I can connect to it more.
PP: For those who aren’t familiar with it, what should people listen for in classical music?
CC: The most important thing is feeling the emotion in the music. Being able to connect the emotions to the music in their personal experiences is a good way to listen to music.
PP: What do you bring to performances emotionally? Can you name a couple of pieces you’ve really responded to?
CC: Competition pieces I just performed over the weekend included Liszt’s “Transcendental Etude No. 12 (Chasse-Neige).” The way I interpret that piece is that it’s about a struggle, whether it’s internal or external.
It starts off really low and quiet but then it builds up, and you can really feel the composer, Liszt, trying to express some kind of longing.
The piece doesn’t end in a completely satisfying way so it leaves the audience kind of hanging with that longing feeling.
One of Beethoven’s sonatas, Op. 81a, known as the Les Adieux sonata, he wrote with a story in mind. It has three movements.
In the first, it’s about him and his friend who is leaving Austria because of the war that’s going on. Throughout the music you can really hear the emotions Beethoven feels.
In Les Adieux, there’s an absence. It’s very slow and dark.
The return is very joyful and bold and charismatic.
PP: When you were developing a sensibility for music, did you first connect to story, to melody, or to something else?
CC: When I first started in music I was around 5 years old so I didn’t have a sense of the full potential that playing the piano had.
Around when I became a teenager I started discovering how I could connect my personal experiences to the music I was playing. I started putting more of my own emotions into the music and I discovered that it made playing the piano a lot more fascinating to me.
As I experience more things in life it’s easier to relate my experiences to the music.
PP: What else do you enjoy? What else moves you?
CC: I like drawing a lot. I’m attracted to art in general and I taught myself to draw for fun.
I draw anything that comes to mind. If I see something interesting I’ll sketch it. I keep a sketchbook with me whenever we go on vacations.
PP: You have time for vacations? I know you perform all over the world.
CC: Well, when I travel. I travel a lot for music festivals.
I really enjoy reading. I used to enjoy fiction a lot, but now I enjoy reading about science. After entering high school my interest in science and engineering grew a lot more. Coming to this high school piqued my interest in the sciences.
PP: Which branch of engineering most interests you?
CC: I’m looking into biomedical engineering [which includes the design of biomedical equipment and devices, such as artificial internal organs, replacements for body parts, and machines for diagnosis and therapy] but I’m still exploring my options.
I haven’t decided what I want to do as a career. I definitely want to do something incorporating engineering and music.
PP: You’re about to represent New Jersey nationally. How do you feel going into this competition?
CC: I feel very honored that I get to represent New Jersey in a national competition. I never would have imagined this a few years ago for myself. I’m completely overjoyed that I get this opportunity.
[slideshow_deploy id=’899′]
PP: You must meet a lot of people out there. Do you stay in touch with other performers?
CC: Definitely, both in competitions and when I travel for music festivals, everywhere I go I always meet new people and they’re always so great.
I think one of the greatest things about music is that even though it’s not a spoken language, everyone can connect to it, so no matter where you go people can understand music and can relate.
When people sit in a concert together they’re all listening to the same music together and all feeling it together. I really feel music can help bring peace and friendship to people and connect them.
[Carrie’s mom suggests Carrie talk about her achievements playing flute.] I also play the flute and just made it into the Bergen County Band as first chair flute. I started around 9, in third grade, and also take private lessons for that and enjoy it very much. I do perform flute but not as much as piano, since I started piano earlier.
With piano I feel like the music is more complex, as you’re playing with both hands and there are a lot more voices you can play. You can pretty much play only one note at a time with flute. I feel like since I’m literally blowing air into the instrument it’s more of a personal connection to the instrument so playing the flute is closer to singing.
PP: Do you sing?
CC: I don’t sing. I think playing the flute also impacted how I understand my piano, because singing is a more natural instrument, as everyone is born with a voice. Playing music on the flute helps me with my interpretation with piano music and vice versa.
PP: How much of your own voice can you express in piano, especially in competition?
CC: Every performer has their own style when they play, which is clear when you listen to different professional musicians. Everyone plays each piece pretty much completely differently even though they are reading the same notes on the page.
Things like where you take time in the music or where you breathe, slow down or speed up or get louder or softer. Those are pretty basic things that can add unique touches to a performance.
There’s a lot more subtleties that can make music sound like a certain style.
When I was younger, my piano teacher always told me I had to find my own voice when I’m playing, or my own style when I’m playing, so I’m not just copying someone else’s music.
I feel like in this competition [MTNA] I really figured out who I am as a musician and my own voice when I play.
It took me a really long time to understand what “voice” meant. It’s more like how well you’re able to feel the music: how well you understand it.
I am so thankful for my teacher, Mr. T, who has guided me through the experience with his very fine teaching.
[Carrie’s mom adds her perspectives on the evolution of the artist’s voice.]
The teacher said, when you play music you have to use your true feeling and that only when you put your true feeling in your audience can hear.
That’s my experience as an audience. We always listen to her play, listen to her performance, and gradually, now we can feel her music. If she puts in the emotions, we hear it. If she doesn’t, we don’t hear it. So that’s the experience we have as well.
We became a better audience because of Carrie.
[Carrie’s dad adds, “It’s a learning experience ever since she picked up piano. We grew together in music.”]
PP: What about the performance space? How have you adjusted to performing in large venues such as Carnegie Hall?
CC: That just comes from experience. When I was younger I would always get really nervous on stage and I would usually rush in my performances because I wanted to get it over with but now I’ve learned to enjoy performing, because it’s where I can really show music.
I think the whole point with music is that you can present it to other people, so as I grew more experienced I learned how to control my nerves and bring out the music so that I could present the work I spent so much time practicing on to other people in concert.
PP: What do you play on at home? I imagine you have a piano…
CC: I have a Mason & Hamlin. Of course every piano is different but my piano is very good compared to most pianos I’ve played on.
[Her mother adds that they’ve had this premium instrument specially tuned to Carrie’s specifications.]
PP: How is it for the family to travel the world together? [Carries mom answers]
The beautiful thing is it’s all the musician-students together. Carrie really enjoyed being with them, not just us.
At the same time we are a family as well. The trips are one week or two weeks. They have practice, performance, and master classes, which is very valuable because you get to see the students from other countries.
You also meet the teachers and professors from other locations so when they take a master class, Carrie, you can tell, learns different things from different perspectives, so that’s really good —and we get to see parents from other locations.
Another interesting thing is whenever we go somewhere, Carrie gets invited to other opportunities. It’s really opened the whole world to her.
PP: What are your thoughts on the value of world travel, Carrie, particularly given that most Americans your age or otherwise probably don’t have that experience?
CC: I feel like getting exposure to other cultures helps me as a person. I consider myself lucky among people in my generation to be able to travel this much and to visit so many places.
I recently went to Portugal a couple of years ago and I really liked it. It’s really clean and the whole environment is very nice.
And Paris was great. I played at two venues there. There are always so many memorable things about each place I visit.
[slideshow_deploy id=’899′]