Phyllis Chen

Phyllis Chen (born 1978) is an American composer, sound artist, and pianist. A member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, she co-composed their 2016 album On The Nature Of Thingness and is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow. After suffering from tendinopathy, she began doing work on the toy piano, including an album and music festival both named UnCaged Toy Piano. Biography Chen, a native of Blacksburg, Virginia, daughter of Dan and Jenny Chen. She started learning piano as a young child. one year earlier than her class. her doctoral dissertation Inventions on the Keyboard was supervised by André Watts. In 2001, she joined the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) as one of their founding members. In 2016, she and Nathan Davis composed the ICE’s album On The Nature Of Thingness. She eventually became Artist Emeritus at ICE. As she once recalled, she “never found the piano to be entirely fulfilling and always thought there was something missing”. and she also composed a toy piano album of the same name. She was the toy pianist for the 2009 musical Coraline at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. She also performed the toy piano at the 2012 Ringling International Arts Festival, where Gayle