Chia Wei Lin is greatly interested in the historiography of music and the history of performers. 

Born and raised as a pianist in Taiwan, Lin received her master’s degree from Taipei National University of the Arts and her bachelor’s degree from National Taiwan Normal University. She began playing piano at age three and her formal music education commenced at age eight. As a pupil of Professor En Wang, a renowned pianist and an enthusiastic promoter of new Taiwanese music, Lin has performed works by contemporary Taiwanese composers, including the esteemed composer Mao-Shuen Chen. She has been performing since the age of twelve, with several premieres to her credit. Recently, she performed and recorded the incidental music for the theater work Elephant’s Graveyard, composed by contemporary American composers Laurie San Martin and Garrett Shatzer in the Mondavi Center at UC Davis.

She has actively taken stage as a solo recitalist, guest soloist with the Davis Summer Symphony Orchestra, the Nanmen Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan, and recital partner with singers and instrumentalists. Lin has also appeared as a rehearsal pianist for operas and musicals, including the musical Oklahoma! with director Mindy Cooper and music director David Möschler in 2009; and light operas such as the the Mikado, presented by the Light Opera Theatre of Sacramento in 2010.

Among Lin’s numerous awards, grants, and prizes are the William Karl Schwarze Music Award and the Fay Nelson Graduate Fellowship in Music, the Third Prize of the female chorus group in Taipei county’s music contest as conductor, First Prize of the mixed chorus group in a national music contest as instructor and accompanist, and First Prize of the piano performance group in Taipei city’s music contest. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Republic of China Scholarship for Music and a four-year full Taiwanese Government Scholarship. Lin’s publications include her master’s thesis, “The Thought of Ferruccio Busoni: A Study on Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst” and the conference paper “An Analysis and Explanation of Chen Mao-Shuen’s piano concerto No. 1.”