Helen Cha
Piano
Hailed as a “deeply expressive” pianist in Music and Vision (UK, 2010), Helen CHA is the Music Director of Musica del Cuore and the Artist-In-Residence at Academia de Música São Pio X.
With extraordinary talents as a pedagogue and talent scout, Cha started as a studio assistant for late Professor Nelita True and musicianship instructor at the Eastman School of Music during graduate studies, becoming a regular examiner and guest lecturer at universities from age 26, and remains a specialist in performance coaching and research on music-related injuries.
She was the youngest faculty at Invitation to Music International Summer Camp (HKAPA) in 2019, and guest faculty at the Hong Kong International Piano Performance and Education Conference. She has given workshops, lectures and masterclasses presented by the LCSD, EXCEL Summer Piano Festival (HKAPA), MUSES (The Education University of Hong Kong), Hong Kong Professional Piano Education Academy, Hong Kong Piano Music Association and View Arts International. She was the presenter of Chamber Fragrance, Debussy Recollection and Non-Stop Classics on RTHK, and a featured performer in Hong Kong Sinfonietta’s Gold Record This is Classical Music 3. Her commissioned solo album and book featuring all piano works by Fr. Aureo Castro was published in Macau in December 2020.
A prize-winning pianist in her youth, Cha has given concerts in USA, UK, Austria, Belarus, Germany, Italy, Moldova, South Korea and China, collaborating with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Moldova National Chamber Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and Pan Asia Symphony Orchestra, among others. A frontier at cross-disciplinary projects, Cha has performed at HKS McDull Music Project 2 (2007), “Rubies” from Hong Kong Ballet’s “Tricolors” (2008), with modern dancer Allen Lam on “Pulsars Between Infinity and Nothingness” (2018), and in 2019 the critically acclaimed “Winterreise – The Rite of Spring” with City Contemporary Dance Company and choreographer Helen Lai in Hong Kong, Beijing and Taipei.
Twice awarded scholarships from the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Cha became a fellow (with distinction) of the Associated Board Royal Schools of Music at age 19 and a first-class honored undergraduate from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts under Gabriel Kwok. Subsequently, she earned the Performer’s Certificate, double Masters and her Doctorate under Nelita True, and was twice appointed as Marshal of the graduating class at the Eastman School of Music.