Music Director, Symphony Orchestra Conductor
As a dynamic and diverse musician, violinist, and conductor, Huifang Chen enjoys a dual career as a performer and an educator. She graduated from the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied violin with Jascha Brodsky. Mrs. Chen has been the Music Director of the Greater Miami Youth Symphony since 2008 and is currently the Concertmaster of the South Florida Symphony Orchestra. Mrs. Chen also teaches violin at the New World School of the Arts in Miami and at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in Palm Beach. During the summers, she performs and teaches at the Killington Music Festival in Vermont. Mrs. Chen was a member of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra from 1994 until its demise in 2003.
As a violin soloist, Mrs. Chen has appeared with many orchestras around the globe including the Taipei Symphony Orchestra in Taiwan and the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra in Czech Republic amongst others. Most recently, she played Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 “Turkish” with the South Florida Symphony Orchestra in 2020. She was the winner of the 1999 Young Concert Artist awarded by the National Concert Hall of Taipei, Taiwan, and a Concerto Competition Winner in 2003 at the University of Miami where she received her Master’s degree in 2005.
As a committed violin pedagogue, many of Mrs. Chen’s students are frequent winners at both local and international competitions. Many are now attending top music schools such as the Curtis Institute of Music and Juilliard School, and many others are now members of professional orchestras.
As a recording artist, she has appeared on dozens of award winning CDs for artists such as the Bee Gees, Natalie Cole, Gloria Estefan, Julio Iglesias, Ricky Martin, Jon Secada and Barbra Streisand. In 2012, she recorded Thomas Sleeper’s Violin Concerto with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra in the Czech Republic and the CD of this recording was released in 2014 on the Albany Label. Most recently, she was featured as a soloist in John Gottsch’s Princess Yurievskaya CD with the South Florida Symphony Orchestra, which was released in 2021 on the Naxos Label.