We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Yi-Fan Chen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Yi-Fan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

My creative path began at a very young age, but it wasn’t until the first time I heard my art song being rehearsed by my musician friends at senior high school that I realized being able to become a composer is such a blessing. I was so fascinated and moved when hearing the music I conceived days and nights that eventually came to life.

During the rehearsal, we tossed around ideas to try to achieve a better interpretation and felt excited when we kept improving time by time. It was such an unparalleled joy when finding my musicians were getting closer and closer to what I imagined in my mind and the emotions I hoped to express through the music. This sense of fulfillment is what motivated me to pursue my career as a composer.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a multimedia composer from Taiwan, who seeks to create music that delivers intriguing melodies, diverse timbres, and heartfelt power. I began by composing concert music at 11, which has led to most of my music being rooted in orchestral settings, while also being comfortable incorporating electric synthesis and sampling. My experience in scoring includes but is not limited to shorts, feature films, TV series, advertisements, and video games.

Recently, I was selected as the winning composer of the 2024 Garden State Film Festival (GSFF), and was invited to be part of the jury team of the Student World Impact Film Festival (SWIFF). In addition, as the selected scholar of the Game Audio Network Guild, I attended the GameSoundCon 2023 in LA.

I love to explore a variety of genres, especially when I can showcase my strength in writing tense and uneasy, or exotic and mysterious cues, like the one I collaborated with the director Chris Del Río Solorzano on the film Prey. This work made its debut on the 2023 NYU Steinhardt Film Scoring Composition Competition winners concert at Symphony Space by NYU Orchestra in New York.

I’m particularly passionate and specialize in orchestral music. I love to create all sorts of timbres and colors by experimenting with different instrument groupings. One of my orchestral works Just Tell Me Who It Was received the 2nd prize in The Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York’s Emerging Composers Competition, and was selected as the runner-up in One Found Sound’s 2022 Emerging Composer Award.

Furthermore, I participated in numerous music events which include the JMH (Joy Music House) Score Production Workshop, the Young Artist Summer Program from the Curtis Institute of Music, the Composer Collaborative Project from New Music USA, and the Atlantic Music Festival.

Regarding work experience, I’m now the composer at Strike Audio and have interned in several places, which include Music and the Moving Image Conference XIX, NYU Screen Scoring Summer Workshops, and ForGood Sound (Film Score Production Studio).

Currently, I’m enrolled in a master’s degree in Screen Scoring at New York University studying with Professor John Kaefer.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I started my creative path by writing concert music when I was 11 and gradually found myself especially interested in contemporary music, so I pursued my Bachelor’s Degree in Music Theory and Concert Composition. However, during my college life, I began to doubt myself when I read Milton Babbitt’s article “Who cares if you listen?”. I wondered, as a composer, how could my music relate to modern life? What does music mean to people nowadays? And, how could I use my work to make a difference in society?

The above questions have haunted my mind over the years since I deeply understand the situation of contemporary classical music mentioned in the article: “The general public is largely unaware of and uninterested in the music, so it is little performed.” Even though I enjoy composing concert music very much, I sometimes still feel frustrated when I can’t find musicians to perform my work and there are limited opportunities to get my music to be heard. Therefore, this is precisely why I dedicated myself to studying scoring for multimedia.

I’m fascinated by how screen music kindly embraces all different styles and allows music to no longer be played in specific places or for particular audiences. With technology, composers can create a decent mock-up without live performance but just by using Digital Audio Workstations (DAW). Furthermore, because I’ve been fond of reading since I was very young, composing music for storytelling has always been my favorite writing approach as well as my strength.

In a nutshell, the visceral power that music with moving images can bring instilled in me a resolute desire to pursue a career in multimedia scoring.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

The ultimate goal for me as a composer is not only about my own unfailing growth that I never stop pursuing, but also a kind of heritage from composers, to performers, then to audiences. Therefore, during the creative process, the first and foremost thing for me is to consider what ideas and feelings I hope to deliver to my listeners, and then find the most effective way to convey them with my musical language.

I hope my music can let people sense some subtle but important feelings, can invite them to think deeper, and can comfort them whenever they need it.

Contact Info:

• Website: yifanchenmusic.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/cyfzz/
• Facebook: facebook.com/judy.chen.71697/
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/yifanchenmusic
• Youtube: youtube.com/@yi-fanchen2889