New Theory Exclusive with New Age & Contemporary Instrumental Composer, Tony Chen By Rachel Dares

I had the great pleasure of sitting down with New Age & Contemporary Instrumental Composer, Tony Chen.

Rachel Dares: What are your earliest musical memories?

Tony Chen: You’ll probably find this pretty funny, but I would have to say my early musical memories were not my fondest. I felt I was “forced” by my parents to learn to play the piano.

Rachel Dares: What led you to become a composer?

Tony Chen: In middle school, as a teenager, I was selected by my teacher to play a piano duet with another classmate for our school’s art festival event. That was the time when I started becoming a bit more interested in playing music. I discovered that my classmate could play music by ear (a gift of hearing a piece of music and being able to play it on the piano without reading a music sheet), I found this very fascinating and started exploring this technique myself.

During the 90’s, the New Age composer Yanni was very popular in China, his music is a combination of electronic music and a full orchestra. Around this time, I started to explore electronic keyboards, and later connected it to computers. I was about 16 or 17 years of age, when I began composing my own musical pieces using computer technology. It was at this time, that I also became captivated with film soundtracks, especially, Disney films and its musicals.

In 2003, I left China for the UK to study music and ventured in the pursuit of a music career. It’s history ever since.

Rachel Dares: How would you describe your music?


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