Come listen to acclaimed conductor Mei Ann Chen speak to our club on January 7, 2010!  This meeting will be held at the Racquet Club of Memphis, instead of our normal location.  Contact us for more information.

The biography below was taken from http://www.memphissymphony.org:

One of the most sought-after young conductors in America, Mei-Ann Chen has just begun her tenure as Music Director of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. Equally exciting and generating much anticipation is her recent appointment as Music Director of the Chicago Sinfonietta (only the second person to hold this position), beginning in July, 2011. Among Ms. Chen’s upcoming debuts are the symphonies of Chicago, Columbus, Edmonton (AB), Pacific, Phoenix, Victoria (BC), BBC Scottish, Graz in Austria, and Netherlands Philharmonic at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Previous guest conducting appearances include all the principal Danish orchestras, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the symphonies of Alabama, Atlanta, Baltimore, Bournemouth, Fort Worth, Kalamazoo, National, Oregon, Seattle, Toledo, Toronto and Trondheim in Norway, Taiwan National, as well as Chautaqua Institution, Grand Teton Music Festival and Norrlands Opera in Sweden.

The first woman to win the Malko Competition (2005), Ms. Chen has served as Assistant Conductor of the Oregon Symphony, and has recently completed highly successful tenures as Assistant Conductor of the Atlanta Symphony and Baltimore Symphony; these two positions were sponsored by the League of American Orchestras. Recipient of the 2007 Taki Concordia Fellowship, she has appeared jointly with Marin Alsop and Stefan Sanderling in highly acclaimed subscription concerts with the Baltimore Symphony, Colorado Symphony and Florida Orchestra.

In 2002, Ms. Chen was unanimously selected as Music Director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic in Oregon, the oldest of its kind and the model for many of the youth orchestras in the United States. During her five-year tenure with the orchestra, she led its sold-out debut in Carnegie Hall, received an ASCAP award for innovative programming, and developed new and unique musicianship programs for the orchestra’s members. She was honored with a Sunburst Award from Young Audiences for her contribution to music education.