Chih-Lin Chou

SEEKING

Band to Join, Other Percussion, Violin, Flute, Other.

ABOUT

Career
Overview: 16 years experience in music performance and organizing concerts and events. Chih-Lin Chou, the artistic director of Canadian Association of Oriental Fine Arts (CAoFA) and Gu-Zheng Ensemble of Montreal (GZEM), is a Chinese-Canadian virtuoso of the gu-zheng, the 21-string Chinese zither.

Screen name:: Chih-Lin Chou
Member since:: Dec 21 2006; Active over 1 month ago
Level of commitment:: Touring

Influences

Ms Chou's CV attests to her status as a virtuoso performer and for the past years she has worked to present traditional and contemporary music to a mixed, but largely Chinese-Canadian audience in a concert environment.

For over a decade, Chih-Lin Chou has wished to find venues and ways of promoting a greater awareness of Chinese culture and her instrument, the gu-zheng, and this activity has found its first fruits through her dedication to teaching and public presentation. The last three years have been a time for the next steps to be planned and their implementation to begin in earnest.

The two widely attended concerts (2003, 2004) have become the high point of continuous promotion in Chih-Lin’s and the group’s activities which now include the creation of formal and informal connections with cultural organizations, community and academic. This has been done by the formalization of GZEM, a larger umbrella support group (CAoFA), and concerted effort to involve more people in upcoming activities.

Grant applications of Canadian Council for the arts such as CD recording project, commissioning of Canadian Composer, and community-based concerts production (through and in conjunction with Multi-Music of Montreal and Montreal Asian Heritage Festival) have been connected to the inclusion of non-chinese instrumentation, dance and mediatic forms of presentation.

The concert in June 2006 is another point of focus for this on-going development as it will combine asian and western instruments in greater number, dance and mediatic presentation (electroacoustic and video). Now, not the first step in the process of group and audience development, this concert is another important stage in the continued growth and strength with the Chinese-Canadian and general Montreal arts / cultural communities.