Brothers Matthew Chen and Nicholas Chen, both students at High School South, are recent competition winners at Westminster Conservatory of Music.
Matthew, a freshman, is a winner of the Scholarship Awards competition. Participants in the competition are nominated by faculty members and perform for a panel of judges. Winners receive a scholarship for private study on their instrument at the conservatory for the following academic year.
He has been studying piano at Westminster Conservatory since he was six years old. When he was 10 he also began playing the violin and joined his school’s orchestra. Since then, he has been taking private lessons at the conservatory with Dezheng Ping, and he is a member of the string ensemble at his high school. In addition to taking honors courses, he volunteers in his community, plays hymns in churches, and performs in a senior center.
Nicholas, a sophomore at South, is a winner of the conservatory’s concerto competition, in which students compete for the opportunity to perform one movement of a concerto with the Westminster Community Orchestra. The winners are selected by Westminster Conservatory faculty.
As a competition winner, he recently performed the first movement of Vivaldi’s Concerto in G Minor for Violin and Strings with the orchestra in Richardson Auditorium. His first instrument was piano and he has also been studying violin since he was 10 with Dezheng Ping. Nicholas has won numerous awards in New Jersey Music Teachers Association competitions, Music Festival and Golden Key Musical Festival at Carnegie Hall. In addition to taking four honors courses at South, he volunteers at area churches and a rehabilitation center.
