Artist Profiles

Gloria Cheng piano

“An invaluable newmusic advocate and a preferred collaborator of composers like Pierre Boulez and EsaPekka Salonen” (New York Times), Grammyand Emmy-winning pianist Gloria Cheng has long been devoted to creative collaborations with composers of our time. She has been a concerto soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and Pierre Boulez, and on its acclaimed Green Umbrella series under Esa-Pekka Salonen and Oliver Knussen. She has been a recitalist at the Ojai Music Festival (where she began her association with Boulez in 1984), Chicago Humanities Festival, William Kapell Festival, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Mendocino, and Chautauqua Music Festivals, and annually on Los Angeles’s Piano Spheres series. She has premiered and been the dedicatee of countless works that include John Williams’s Prelude and Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Dichotomie, and John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction for two pianos. In duo-recitals with the composers, she premiered Thomas Adès’s two-piano Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face and Terry Riley’s Cheng Tiger Growl Roar. Winner of the Best Instrumental Solo Performance (without orchestra) Grammy for her 2008 recording Piano Music of Salonen, Stucky, and Lutosławski, she received a second nomination for her 2013 disc The Edge of Light: Messiaen/Saariaho. Her film project, MONTAGE: Great Film Composers and the Piano, featuring Bruce Broughton, Don Davis, Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giacchino, Randy Newman, and John Williams, aired multiple times on PBS SoCal and won the 2018 Los Angeles Area Emmy.

Garlands for Steven Stucky was her 2018 star-studded CD tribute to the late composer by 32 of his friends and former students. Her education includes a BA in economics from Stanford University, a Woolley Scholarship for study in Paris, and graduate degrees in performance from UCLA and the University of Southern California, where her teachers included Aube Tzerko and John Perry. She teaches graduate seminars and chamber music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

young influencer in performing arts by The Generation T List of Asia Tatler in 2018 and 2019; and one of 10 Outstanding Young Persons of Taiwan by Junior Chamber International. She was named one of the Best Dancers of 2021 in Richard Move’s Herstory of the Universe by the New York Times

PeiJu Chien-Pott is an internationally acclaimed award-winning contemporary dance artist and choreographer from Taiwan, celebrated particularly for her work as a principal dancer for the Martha Graham Dance Company. Described as “one of the greatest living modern dancers” and “the most dramatically daring and physically chameleon-esque Graham dancer of her generation,” ChienPott has interpreted the iconic lead roles of Martha Graham’s repertoire. She holds a BFA in Dance from Taipei National University of the Arts, where she has been honored with “Outstanding Alumni Award.” Chien-Pott has received many prestigious international recognitions, including a Bessie from the NY Dance and Performance Awards; Positano Premia La Danza Leonide Massine for Best Female Contemporary Dancer; an honoree of the Women’s History Month by Hudson County; named by Dance Magazine one of its Best Performers in 2014 and 2017; and received the Capri International Dance Award 2018. Chien-Pott was selected as a

Her recent choreography includes Rebirth in collaboration with sculptor Kang MuXiang for Taipei 101; Island, created during the pandemic on commission from the Iron Rose Festival of Taiwan; Unity, completed for the late choreographer Nai-Ni Chen and premiered at the New York Live Arts; Split, commissioned by Periapsis Music and Dance; and she was one of the collaborating choreographers for the evening-length work The Threads Project #1 Universal Dialogues of Buglisi Dance Theater, premiered at the Chelsea Factory. She has recently premiered her work Lion in the City, a hip-hop Chinese Lion Dance for Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company’s Lunar New Year program celebrating the Year of the Water Rabbit. Chien-Pott’s appearance in a short film Nala, directed by British filmmaker and choreographer Darshan Singh Bhuller, has received 10 international film awards. Chien-Pott was awarded a 2023 choreography fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is a faculty member at The Ailey School and Martha Graham School.

Shawn Conley bass

Hawaiian-born bassist and composer Shawn Conley grew up loving all types of music. This love developed into a career that straddles many genres. He has been playing with the Silkroad Ensemble for six years and is a