Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 23, 1995 TAG: 9505230078
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHIE DICKENSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
"Music has been a friend to me," Phyllis Chen says. "If I love music, it will love me back."
In the living room of her home, the Blacksburg High School senior sits down to play the piano, and the depth of the relationship becomes apparent.
"I've never seen her unhappy after playing," says her father, Dan Chen. "She always gets something back ... a peace."
Her mother, Jenny Chen, agrees. When her schoolwork is heavy, or she is feeling stressed, Phyllis plays. "Then she's ready to do her work," Jenny Chen says.
Phyllis Chen, who at 16 is graduating from high school a year early, has auditioned and been accepted at five of the country's most prestigious schools for music study: Oberlin College, Indiana University, the University of Michigan, the Carnegie-Mellon Institute, and Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. Most of the schools offered her merit scholarships.
Recently she decided to study at Oberlin, a small, private Ohio college known internationally for its music program. Oberlin's school of music offered her the Dean's Talent Award, with the maximum amount of money available, for up to five years of study.
Her piano teacher, Teresa Ehrlich, tries to put the significance of Chen's acceptances into perspective. At Indiana University, a school with more than 1,000 pianists in its renowned music program, says Ehrlich, Chen auditioned among undergraduate, master's and doctoral candidates and scored the highest of anyone.
"You have to remember that she is only 16," Ehrlich says. "That's a huge advantage in the world of music, because she has years to develop.
"There is no one best performer of any instrument, but she is certainly outstanding among students her age."
Chen began taking piano lessons when she was 5. "We had a piano, and I liked to play on it," she says, so her parents decided to let her try lessons. Caryl Conger, now a professor at Radford University, was her first teacher.
"With everything Phyllis ever played," Conger says, "she was communicating with her audience through the music. She may not have known she was doing that, and she may not know it now, but she has a gift of natural musical expression that is very difficult to teach, and it has been there from the beginning."
She always had the backing of her family, adds Conger. "They were obviously not pushing her to do this, but they provided tremendous support."
"When Phyllis first came to me," Ehrlich says, "she was playing music on the advanced beginner level, but I saw a potential for something much beyond that." To challenge her, Ehrlich skipped her up two whole levels and began giving her professional level repertoire. "Each thing I gave her, she learned," Ehrlich says. "It was hard, but she rose to the challenge."
At 14, Chen attended summer camp at the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina. "It was the first time I had been around a group of people who were all into music," she says, and she came back convinced that she wanted to pursue it as a career.
Dan and Jenny Chen know that music is a highly competitive field. "I have friends all around the country who say that kids from small towns sometimes have a hard time," Dan Chen said. "But we are very lucky here. The public schools are supportive of the arts. In Blacksburg, we have Mr. Bill Ray and Dr. Diana Love teaching band. And we have people like Teresa Ehrlich and Caryl Conger."
In middle school, Phyllis Chen took up the flute, which she studied privately under David Widder, who is on the music faculty at Virginia Tech, and joined the band under Ray and Love.
"But there's more to Phyllis than her musical ability," Widder says. "She's well-read, intelligent, thoughtful and has remained very accessible to her peers. This keeps her feet on the ground, and it also helps her in interpreting music."
Chen sings with the Blacksburg High School Madrigals and is president of the Peer Counseling Association. She is the accompanist for the high school concert choir and for the Blacksburg United Methodist Church youth choir. She's also first chair flutist in the high school symphonic band.
At the spring band concert Wednesday, she will play Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" on piano. "There are a lot of talented students at the high school," band director Diana Love says, "but I wanted to feature her because she is exceptional as a pianist, and it's good, too, for the other kids to see her play."
Chen has won first place at the Bartok/Kabelevsky International Piano Competition and has been a finalist in the Stravinsky Awards, also an international competition. She won music scholarships from the Blacksburg Rotary Club and the Rebecca Orr Piano Scholarship competition.
When asked what award or honor she is most proud of, she can't name one. "I'm proud of any performance," she says. "It's a huge accomplishment to play before people and feel satisfied."
About Phyllis Chen's future, Ehrlich says, "The next six years are really critical. It's critical that she have excellent professors, that she be surrounded by peers who are better than she is so she'll be challenged, and it's critical that she work very, very hard. If all those things are in place, and she continues to advance the way she has for the past four years, the sky's the limit for Phyllis."
by CNB