Fiona Siang Yun Sze-Lorrain
Musician, Writer, Literary Translator
Considered among one of the best from her generation, Fiona Siang Yun Sze-Lorrain, as harpist (guzheng/Chinese zither) and pianist, made her performance debut at age 9 in Singapore's Victoria Concert Hall. During her musical career, she has played at Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Merkins Concert Hall, Carnegie Hall, World Music Hall of Wesleyan University, Maison des cultures du monde, Maison des racines du monde, Zuiderspershuis Wereldculturen centrum, Rasa Wereldculturen centrum, UNESCO House, etc.
Sze has traveled on international tours to Sydney, Melbourne, Budapest, Venice, Milan, London, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam, Cologne, Munich, Leipzig, Montreal, Edmonton, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Beijing, Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Seoul. Her skills, artistic interpretation and passion revealed during her performances have won her praises from audiences including Princess Diana, Presidents François Mitterrand, Bill Clinton and Ong Teng Cheong, Deng Xiaoping, Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, Suharto, and Goh Chok Tong, as well as Emperor Hirohito.
A guzheng/zither solo concertist since 1990, she has appeared on television in New York (Times Warner Cable), Singapore (Singapore Broadcasting Corporation), Japan (FUJI Television), Hong Kong and Malaysia. Recordings of her music have also been released on radio stations such as France Culture, Radio 938, etc. Her feature CD, In One Take (with Guo Gan, erhu) will be released in Europe in 2010.
Three-time laureate of Asian Cup International (guzheng performance), Sze studied mainly with world renowned zheng masters, Zhang Yan and Wang Changyuan. In addition to her solo guzheng/zither performances, she has had taken residencies with ensembles such as New York Chinese Music Ensemble, IIIZ+ Music Ensemble, East Coast Zheng Ensemble, Wang Changyuan Zheng Ensemble, etc. Invited as a judge for international guzheng competitions, she also performs for the Melody of Dialogue Among Civilisations.
Sze began her formal piano education in 1984. She attended the Associated Board of Royal School of Music (London) and Ecole normale de la musique-Cortot (Paris), studying under the mentorship of Marie-Antoinette Pictet and Tadic Dusan.
She received her university education as a scholar from Columbia University and New York University, before continuing her PhD In French at Paris IV-Sorbonne. She now serves as a research associate at Centre de recherche sur l'histoire du théâtre, writing on the dramatic literature of Gao Xingjian.
Author of a collection of poetry, Water the Moon (Marick Press, 2010), Sze-Lorrain writes and translates in English, French and Chinese. Her poems, essays and plays have appeared in various international literary journals and newspapers. As a tanslator, she has translated work by Auxeméry, Samuel Beckett, Greta Knutson, Ghérasim Luca, Maurice Maeterlinck, Gertrude Stein, Susan Sontag, and Gao Xingjian, as well as contemporary Chinese poets (with Ye Chun) such as Hai Zi, Yang Zi, Yang Jian and Yi Lu. She has co-authored with Gao Xingjian, Silhouette/Shadow (Contours, 2007), and edited (with Diane Powell) Critical Issues on Interculturalism (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2004). Together with Sally Molini and Karen Rigby, she is a co-founder and co-editor of Cerise Press: A Journal of Literature, Arts and Culture. She also co-directs Vif éditions, an independent French publishing house that specializes in world literature.
Selected awards and scholarships that Sze has received include the All-Asian Star Performance Award, International Asian Heritage Award, New PEN-VOICE Prize, International Youth Music Festival Award, Shaw Foundation Scholarship, Mediacorp Award, etc.
In January 2004, Division of Sheng Productions (The Asian New Yorker, Time Warner Cable) in New York filmed and released a feature-length documentary that showcases Sze's artistic career, Fiona Sze: Between two cultures (Fiona Sze: Entre deux cultures).
Sze-Lorrain lives in Paris, France, and New York.