Carolyn Chen

Carolyn Chen has made music for supermarket, demolition district, and the dark. Her work reconfigures the everyday to retune habits of our ears through sound, text, light, and movement. Her studies of the guqin, a Chinese zither traditionally played for private meditation in nature, have informed her thinking on listening in social spaces. 

Recent projects include an audio essay on a scream and commissions for AMOC, Klangforum Wien and the LA Phil New Music Group. Described by The New York Times as “the evening’s most consistently alluring … quiet but lush,” her work has been presented in 25 countries and supported by the Berlin Prize, the Fulbright Program, and ASCAP’s Fred Ho Award for work that “defies boundaries and genres.” Writing and recordings are available in MusikTexte, Experimental Music Yearbook, New Centennial Review, Leonardo Music Journal, Quakebasket, and the wulf. She earned a Ph.D. in music from UC San Diego, and an M.A. in Modern Thought and Literature and B.A. in music from Stanford University. She lives in Los Angeles.