Chiaopin Kuo

Harpsichord

After studying piano in Taiwan, her native country, Chiaopin Kuo decided to come to France to study the harpsichord. She was soon admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon, where she studied harpsichord and basso continuo with Huguette Dreyfus and Françoise Lengellé, and basso continuo with Jesper Christensen and Yves Rechsteiner. After graduating, she went to the Netherlands to study with Menno Van Delft at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. She completed her training with advice on basso continuo from Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Richard Egarr.

A very active chamber musician, Chiaopin Kuo is a founding member of l’Assemblée des Honnestes Curieux (Amandine Beyer, Antoine Torunczyk, Baldomero Barciela), an ensemble with which she won 1st Prize and the Special Jury Prize at the Premio Bonporti International Chamber Music Competition in 1998, as well as Dissonanti (Sébastien Marq, Javier Zafra, Tami Troman) and Les Friandises (Jacques-Antoine Bresch, Valérie Balssa). She also founded Becs et Ongles with guitarist Caroline Cartier, an ensemble devoted to twentieth-century and contemporary music for harpsichord and guitar. This broadening towards a more modern repertoire has led her to collaborate with composer Guy Printemps, for whom she has created several original works for harpsichord. Since 2019 she has worked occasionally with the Paris Opera.

As a member of these ensembles, she performs at most of the leading festivals throughout Europe (including the Urbino Festival, Musica & Poesia in San Maurizio in Milan, the Ambronay Festival, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Radio France Festival, the Sablé Festival, the Pontoise Baroque Festival, etc.) and records CDs that have won the highest awards from the specialised press (Diapason d’Or, Choc du Monde de la Musique, etc.).

A passionate teacher, she holds the Certificat d’Aptitude de Professeur de Musique Ancienne and teaches harpsichord and basso continuo at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Intercommunal d’Alfortville (94).