Grammy®-Nominated Pianist Han Chen & Flutist Roberta Michel Presented By The Phillips Collection In Duo Concert, March 22, 2026

GRAMMY^®-nominated pianist Han Chen will be joined by flutist Roberta Michel in a duo concert presented by The Phillips Collection in Washington D. C. (1600 21st Street, NW Washington, DC 20009) on Sunday afternoon March 22, 2026, 4 pm. This concert is part of the Phillips Collection’s popular Sunday Concert series.  

The two musicians built their program around the artist Joan Miró, who is being featured in an exhibition at the Phillips Collection: Miró and the United States (March 21-July 5, 2026). Mr. Chen and Ms. Michel will perform works by composers whom Miró admired or, in many cases, befriended, including Edgard Varèse, George Antheil, Pierre Boulez, Igor Stravinsky, and György Ligeti. The full program follows:

This event is sold-out. Limited Rush Tickets will be available on Friday March 20 before the concert at 4 pm, in-person, on the event page, or by phone: 202-387-2151 ext. 277. Limited in-person Standby Tickets might be available on a first come, first served base, starting at 3 pm in the admissions lobby on the day of the concert. For more information please visit pianist Han Chen’s website and flutist Roberta Michel’s website.

A fearless performer with seemingly limitless imagination and possessed with uncanny energy, pianist Han Chen plays scores old and new with rare rigor and insight. This November, the Recording Academy announced that he has been nominated for a GRAMMY^® Award in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category for Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement in D Minor. The CD, released on the Naxos label, features the Malmö Opera Orchestra led by John Jeter.

Alex Ross, classical music critic of The New Yorker, who selected Mr. Chen’s Naxos disc of the Ligeti Études and Capriccios as a “Notable Classical Recording of 2023,” wrote: “The Taiwanese pianist Han Chen, a noted interpreter of the Ligeti Études and other modernist repertory, has made a blistering album of the [Liszt] opera transcriptions.” –The New Yorker, September 4, 2023

Attending “Infinite Staircase,” Mr. Chen’s recent traversal of the 18 Ligeti Etudes and 18 accompanying world premieres, George Grella titled his review:  “Han Chen’s remarkable playing equal to the genius of Ligeti’s Etudes” and went on to exclaim:

…he was astonishing, with some of the finest pianism one has ever witnessed. Beyond sheer dexterity, this was tremendously musical playing, with every phrase clear and pointed in a certain direction, fluid control of dynamics and form, a combination of articulation and force that was hard to believe. One had the feeling that Chen was deep inside the work, opening up every detail of Ligeti’s musical personality. His energy and stamina within each Étude and through the whole concert were extraordinary.

—New York Classical Review, September 25, 2023

Reviewing this event in I Care If You Listen, Lana Norris summarized it as a “marathon of canonical music and new works that displayed exquisite programming, stupendous technique, and forward-thinking expansion of classical music’s best traditions.” —September 28, 2023

Gold Medalist at the 2013 China International Piano Competition and a prizewinner at the 2018 Honens International Piano Competition, Mr. Chen has also been praised by Gramophone as “impressively com-manding and authoritative” and further cited by The New York Times for his “graceful touch,” “rhythmic precision” and “hypnotic charm.” 

Mr. Chen’s musical vision is manifest in his four solo Naxos CDs focusing on Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Thomas Adès, and György Ligeti’s Complete Piano Études. Reviewing the Ligeti recording in the August 2023 issue of Gramophone, Jed Distler wrote:

[He is] one of the few pianists who handles both gnarly contemporary scores and over-the-top Romantic showpieces with equal authority and style...he surmounts the sophisticated rhythmic challenges of Ligeti's Études to a T, while infusing them with plenty of tonal allure and personality. Chen aims for clarity and balance over sheer speed, yielding steadier results and more cogent interplay between the hands. Within the gorgeous expanding and contracting textures of 'Cordes à vide,' Han makes expressive points through voicing and hand balance alone...[and exhibits] meticulous and consistent détaché/sostenuto differentiation throughout 'Fanfares.' He patiently spins out the shifting rhythmic patterns of 'Entrelacs' as if the keyboard were an expansive and seamless canvas.

Mr. Chen is equally a powerful performer of the classic piano repertoire. Reviewing Mr. Chen performing Beethoven’s Sonata No. 29 Op. 106 Hammerklavier, Lee Eiseman of The Boston Music Intelligencer had this to say:

Oxygenated by powerful intellectual bellows and endowed with muscular forearms, Chen didn’t just hammer Beethoven’s formidably relentless and ever-modern challenge to pianists and listeners; with fire and tempering plunges he alternately annealed, welded, sintered, and sensitively stretched the well-wrought iron into impressive curls and shapely forms. His carefully plotted interpretations conveyed nuance and compelling gesture through very well-graduated colorations and dynamics from white hot to warmly glowing. No two repeated chords sounded the same. Chen’s Beethoven seemed to anticipate Berg and Ligeti on this night.

—August 19, 2023

He has appeared as soloist with the Calgary Philharmonic, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Lexington Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, China Symphony Orchestra, and Xiamen Philharmonic. In December 2022 he made his Lincoln Center debut with Riverside Symphony at Alice Tully Hall performing Mozart’s early masterwork, the Piano Concerto No. 9, le Jeunehomme. Mr. Chen has performed as solo recitalist internationally. In demand as a chamber musician, he is a core member of Ensemble Échappé while regularly collaborating with The Metropolis Ensemble. In 2021, Chen launched Migration Music, an ongoing series of performances and interviews with immigrant composers.

Han Chen has studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky, Wha Kyung Byun, and Ursula Oppens at The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, and CUNY Graduate Center. He is represented by Black Tea Music.

Brooklyn-based flutist Roberta Michel is dedicated to the music of our time. She has commissioned and premiered hundreds of new works and has worked with many notable composers of our day. Roberta is the flutist and Co-Director of Wavefield Ensemble and is a member of Da Capo Chamber Players, PinkNoise, and Duo RoMi.

Roberta has also performed with: Art Ensemble of Chicago, Cadillac Moon Ensemble (founding member), SEM Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ecce Ensemble, Portland String Quartet, Newspeak, Wet Ink Ensemble, Argento, Iktus, Wordless Music Orchestra, Ensemble LPR, and Cygnus Ensemble among others. Recent venues include: Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Alice Tulley Hall, Merkin Hall, The Kennedy Center, Roulette, Issue Project Room, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She can be heard on New Focus, Chandos, Innova, Tzadik, Bridge, Wide Hive, New Dynamic, and Meta Records. She played on the 2021 GRAMMY-winning album of Dame Ethyl Smyth’s The Prison with Experiential Orchestra. Her recently released solo album Hush, on New Focus Recordings, “digs deep into the possibilities of flute on this gripping solo recital.”

Originally from Maine, Roberta attended the University of Colorado at Boulder and SUNY-Purchase College and has studied with Robert Dick, Tara O’Connor, Alexa Still, and Jean Rosenblum. She holds a doctorate in music performance from the City University of New York Graduate Center and is a winner of the NFA Graduate Research Competition for her dissertation on the flute music of Salvatore Sciarrino.

Roberta is the Assistant Teaching Professor of Flute at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She previously taught flute at Sarah Lawrence College, Brooklyn College, and music courses at St. Francis College. She plays a Brannen flute with a Mancke headjoint.

For further information, please contact Hemsing Associates at 212-772-1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com.

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