Bio

Zoe Hwang was an accomplished Taiwanese musician and resided in Taipei with her family. From the age of 6, she studied piano and sang in choirs. She started her formal voice training at the National Taiwan University of Arts. She furthered her musical training in the US and Europe. She received her bachelor and master degrees in Voice, and Professional Studies in Opera Training from The Juilliard School of New York.

Her musical career commenced with the award of a Bronze Medal in the prestigious International Queen Elisabeth Vocal Competition in Belgium. This honor culminated in the production of her first solo CD on German Lieder by REM, France. She was the only Taiwanese award winner in voice since the inception of the Competition.

Since that time, she was engaged to hold solo recitals, perform major roles in operas, and appeared as a solo artist in festivals in Taipei, New York, Israel, the Flanders Festival in Belgium, Printemps des arts de Monte-Carlo, Aldeburgh Festival in England. In one of her musical accomplishments, she was the recipient of grants from the Taiwanese government as visiting scholar to Paris and later to London. She had cultivated new generations of musicians by teaching voice, and appeared in concerts both as a singer and as a pianist. Her extensive knowledge and insights made her a popular lecturer in literature and music.

She was a Renaissance woman pioneering innovative projects in arts, music, literature and present day media technology, that captivated her audience and readers with unique insights into music and its relevance to our lives, laymen or professional alike.

She was an award-winning, bestselling author with thirteen books published to her credit, and was a regular columnist for several magazines and newspapers. She had further extended her artistic endeavors as a consultant for the fashion and advertising industries in the use of music in events.

One of her major contributions to the promotion of classical music in Taiwan was her role as a founding member to the first classical radio station in Taiwan, The Philharmonic Radio of Taipei. For the station, she hosted a highly acclaimed daily program where she presented musical programs and interviews major international celebrities in a variety of fields. She later brought her expertise to IC975 broadcasting company in Xinzhu Science Park and created and hosted the "ici Zoe, Zoe is here" program with even more fresh ideas and clear visions that further brought relevance of classical music to the public. This program and her were finalists for the Broadcast Golden Bells Awards. On October 15, 2022 at the award ceremony, she was awarded posthumously "Genre Music Programming presenter Award".

Due to her continuous accomplishments in classical music in Taiwan, she was invited to perform a solo recital in the 2010 Chopin Festival in Taiwan, held at the esteemed National Concert Hall of Taiwan. There, she premiered Chopin’s 17 songs, sung in Polish that she amazingly mastered in 6 months. The success of this recital gained the attention of the Polish government, which would have sponsored her concert tour to appear in Warsaw in Spring 2011 but was unfortunately thawed by the national tragedy in Poland. In 2018 she was invited again to visit Poland as a music scholar, including a visit to Chopin's birth place.

Her most recent projects included the classical music podcast "Zoe's Blue Stocking Club" with Provoice.tw where she would play a piece of music on the piano, and shared her insights on the music, its history background and the composer with the audience. She created three seasons of the podcast with over 130 episodes. Various workshops and lecture series on music and literature were unfortunately cancelled due to her sudden death.