黃凱盈 Kaiyin Huang

Awarded as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons in Taiwan of 2015, pianist Kaiyin Huang received her Bachelor’s degree from the Julliard School, Master’s degree from the Yale School of Music and Doctoral Degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. While she was studying in New York City, she performed on many world-renowned stages including Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. In 2013 she published her first book titled The Boiling Frog, an exploration of the macro-economic phenomenon and corporate social responsibility. Thereafter, she launched and participated in various humanitarian and social impact projects in Northern Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, while continuing to engage in youth education, following the most challenging social issues globally and supporting the musical development in Taiwan.

In Southeast Asia, Kaiyin co-founded the Myanmar Music Festival in 2014, which brought musicians from Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States together to promote cultural diversity through performances and cultural exchange workshops. Since then, the festival was held for eight consecutive years, celebrated the 70th anniversary together with the United Nations and received the high recognition and participation from Daw leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the most renowned democratic leader of Myanmar. In the Middle East, Kaiyin was invited by the Lebanese American University in 2019 to perform Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, which combined music and dance in an advocacy for the rights of the Arab women. In Northern Africa, Kaiyin is a long-term supporter of Tunisia88, a nationwide music program to create music clubs in all 585 public high schools in Tunisia with the goal to nurture the next-generation leaders for the newly democratized country after the Jasmine Revolution. Meanwhile, similar initiatives have also been also carried out in Taiwan. Since 2013, Taiwan88 has toured to different parts of the island with its interactive style of concerts, providing not only the opportunities for students in both urban and rural areas to appreciate world-class music performances, but also encouraging students to engage in the process of musical creation combined with the local culture. So far, Taiwan88 has accumulated an overall participation in excess of 40,000 students from 145 schools across 18 counties and cities.

With stories collected from different countries and inspirations obtained from different places in Taiwan, Kaiyin established Kairos Artsin 2015. Ever since then, Kaiyin has managed to present exciting performances one after the other both as a performer and a producer: in 2015, My Homeland concert series depicted the interpretations and emotions that the new generation have towards their home; in 2018, the Gate of Time told the history of Taipei and the prospects for the city via a combination of Taiwanese folk song arrangements and aboriginal songs created by the Paiwan and Bunon indigenous artists; in 2019, Future ING—an encounter with a better self from the future was a crossover production combining classical music with original compositions; in 2017, in conjunction with the Japanese Art at Its Finest, the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum Lakeside Concert attracted over ten thousand audiences; and in 2020, a choir consisting of students from Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon collaborated with the Taipei Civic Symphony Orchestra in Friends from Afar concert tour, bringing over a hundred musicians together performing in concert halls in Turkey and Lebanon.

As a pianist with a humanitarian heart, Kaiyin seeks to find resonance between people from different social and cultural backgrounds. She hopes to inspire more people to cherish the best possibilities for positive changes in the world with hope, care and love.