Frederic Chiu
Frederic Chiu will talk about his life as a pianist. His intriguing piano-playing and teaching springs from a diverse set of experiences and interests that include his Asian/American/European background and his musical training that he has combined with an early and ongoing exploration of artificial intelligences and human psychology, especially the body-mind-hearts connection.
With over 25 CDs, his repertoire includes the complete works of Prokofiev and popular classics of Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn and Rossini. His work has been recognized by Stereo Review, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Chiu has toured Europe and the United States appearing with world renowned orchestras in prestigious halls such as the Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Koi and Suntory Halls in Tokyo.
His most recent releases are entitled “Distant Voices” and “Hymns & Dervishes.” On his 50th birthday he hopes to have completed performances in 50 of the United States.
Arranged by Tom Lom
A brief video of Chiu playing the piano can be seen by clicking on the image below.
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
“We’re living in a sensitive age, Cuke, and I’m not altogether sure you’re fully attuned to it.” So says Irish-American politician Frank Skeffington—a cynical, corrupt 1950s mayor, and also an old-school gentleman who looks after the constituents of his New England city and enjoys their unwavering loyalty in return. But in our age of dynasties, mercurial social sensitivities, and politicians making love to the camera, Skeffington might as well be talking to us.
The extraordinary New York Times bestselling account of James Garfield’s rise from poverty to the American presidency, and the dramatic history of his assassination and legacy, from bestselling author of The River of Doubt, Candice Millard. 
