Hailed as the new "Ambassador for New Music" (The Ottawa Citizen) and proclaimed “dazzling” (Classicagenda) and “brilliant” (Piano News) pianist and conductor Claudia Chan is known as one of the foremost young interpreters of contemporary classical music and has been praised for a “piano playing that moves seemingly effortlessly between often hair-raising (but never self-indulgent) virtuosity and sublime sound development” (Fono Forum). Her thoughtful interpretations of music from Brahms to Boulez and beyond have been heard in major concert halls in Canada, the US, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and South Korea, as well as on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio France, and all major German radio stations.

After being named first prize winner of the 33rd Eckhardt-Gramatte Competition for Contemporary Performance in 2010, Claudia started performing extensively around North America, including a 14-city recital tour of Canada playing the winning program of contemporary and classical piano music. During the tour, she coached young performers from Canadian universities on contemporary piano repertoire and was featured on an episode of CBC’s Next!, selected as one of 8 up-and-coming young musicians from Canada. Since then, she has given piano masterclasses and workshops on contemporary performance at universities across Canada, USA, France, and Germany. Claudia was appointed solo artist-in-residence at the Fondation Royaumont as part of the Voix Nouvelles programme and the Médiathèque musicale Mahler in Paris from 2017 to 2020, where she worked with other musicians, composers, dancers, and researchers on interdisciplinary projects as well as presenting concerts, lectures, and masterclasses.

She made her German orchestral debut in 2012 at the Stadthalle in Wuppertal as soloist in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, in a performance which the Westdeutsche Zeitung proclaimed was “sovereign... with exciting buildups, beautiful transitions, and fine lyricism.” Claudia has since been heard as soloist and chamber musician at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Acht Brücken Festival (Cologne), the MATA Festival (New York City), the Heidelberger Frühling Festival, the Klangspuren Schwaz Festival, the Festival Musica Strasbourg, the Nuova Consonanza Festival (Rome), the 21C Festival (Toronto), the Tongyeong International Music Festival, the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, the New Creations Festival (Toronto), the NOW! Festival (Essen), the Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, PianoCity Milano, the Clearing Festival for Contemporary Music (Portland, Oregon), the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Kelowna Pianoforte Festival, the Toronto Summer Music Academy, in New York City at the Mannes Festival for Contemporary Festival, and as soloist with the West German Radio Orchestra (WDR Sinfonieorchester), I Musici (Montreal), Sinfonia Toronto, Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, Hart House, Cathedral Bluffs, and Thirteen Strings Orchestras. She has given masterclasses and workshops at the Universities of Toronto, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, and Brandon in Canada, and at the Manhattan School of Music, Cornell University, Northwestern University (Chicago), Eastman School of Music (Rochester), and University of Buffalo the USA, and Cergy-Pontoise and Bobigny Conservatoires in France and coached chamber groups at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. In 2024, she will give further masterclasses in Australia at the University of Melbourne, Sydney Conservatorium, Monash University, Elder Conservatorium, and is a visiting Artist-in-Residence at the Australian National Academy of Music. 

Also active as a chamber musician, Claudia is a founding member of the award-winning contemporary music quartet BRuCH, who has been featured at the Acht Brücken Festival Köln and the Zeitgenuss Festival in Karlsruhe among others, and were recently the subject of two full-length radio features by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Deutschlandfunk in Cologne. In April 2016, Claudia joined French contemporary ensemble Linea from Strasbourg as guest pianist, under the baton of Jean-Philippe Wurtz, for an 8 concert tour of the United States. From 2019-2021, Claudia the pianist for the renowned contemporary and experimental music ensemble hand werk, based in Germany.

Her work with contemporary music has brought her into close contact with such exciting composers as Helmut Lachenmann, Rebecca Saunders, Hans Thomalla, Philippe Leroux, Unsuk Chin, Brian Current, Vassos Nicolaou, Marton Illes, and Johannes Schöllhorn, and she has the honour of being the dedicatee of works by composers such as Alice Ho, Huihui Cheng, Lisa Streich, Matthias Krüger, Julien Jamet, Giovanni Biswas, Matthew Chamberlain, Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh, Chris Goddard, and Michelle Agnes Magalhaes, with many more collaborations planned for the near future.

Highlights in past seasons include a solo recitals, at the Theatre Bouffes du Nord in Paris, her debut at the Tongyeong International Music Festival in South Korea, as soloist with I Musici Orchestra in Messiaen’s “Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine” at the Salle Bourgie in Montreal, and her debut with the WDR Sinfonieorchester under the direction of Michael Wendeberg in a piano concerto written for her by Lisa Streich (Germany/Sweden) at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. 

After finishing her formative studies with Elaine Kruse in Ottawa, Claudia completed her undergraduate studies at The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory, as a Dean's scholarship student studying with David Louie and John Perry, her Master’s of Music at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln with Prof. Dr. Florence Millet, and graduated with highest honours from the Master's of New Piano Music in the class of Prof. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, after which she obtained a Konzertexamen with Distinction in contemporary chamber music with BRuCH, under the direction of Prof. Barbara Maurer, as the ensemble-in-residence at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen.

Her debut solo CD, “Thoughts about the Piano”, featuring music by Elliott Carter, Iannis Xenakis, Philippe Leroux and pieces commissioned for her by Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh, Matthew Chamberlain and Mael Bailly, was released on B Records (France) in March 2021 to much acclaim, being named CD of the week by Radio France, and awarded 5 stars from Diapason, Classica, and Fono Forum. Upcoming releases include her next solo CD “toccare” featuring contemporary Italian piano music, including world premieres by Francesco Filidei in October 2024, and other solo and chamber releases on Neos, bastille musique, and Avi/Deutsche Grammophon.

Also active as a conductor, Claudia was appointed musical director of the premiere of a new chamber opera from Georg Friedrich Haas at the Konzert Theater Bern in Switzerland for 2022, which will be reprised in 2024. She will also be conducting a production of Iris ter Schiphorst’s “Gänsemagd” at the Staatsoper in Hamburg in 2025.

Claudia has been a part of the piano faculty of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln in Germany since 2018. 

(This is the complete and official biography, updated February 2024)