Honens Prize Laureate
Calgary-native Katherine Chi became the first woman and the first Canadian to be named Honens Prize Laureate in 2000, a triumph that brought her international attention. She has become one of Canada’s foremost musical interpreters having performed throughout Europe and North America to great acclaim. “Ms Chi displayed a keen musical intelligence and a powerful arsenal of technique” wrote The New York Times.
Sought after as a concerto soloist of musical and technical distinction, Chi is noted for the breadth of her repertoire. While praised for her interpretations of Mozart, she is also applauded for performances of major romantic and 20th century concerti. “The most sensational but, better, the most unfailingly cogent and compelling Prokofiev’s Third I have heard in years” wrote the Globe and Mail. And when Katherine Chi recreated Stockhausen’s landmark work, Mantra, for two pianos and electronics the Boston Globewrote “when the superb pianists Katherine Chi and Aleksandar Madzar took on the challenge at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday, it was a welcome opportunity: courtside seats at the creation. Chi and Madzar were ensconced among percussion, microphones, and MIDI controllers … the form unfolding like a venerable suite even as it pushes the modernist envelope.”
A year after her debut recital at age nine, Katherine Chi was accepted to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. She continued studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she received her Master’s degree, Graduate, Artist Diploma and Doctorate. She later studied for two years at the International Piano Foundation in Como, Italy, and at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. Her debut recording on the Honens label features works of Beethoven and Rachmaninov.