First Prize winner of the Stravinsky International Piano Competition, Lucille Chung has been celebrated for her “stylish and refined” performances by Gramophone. She was born in Montreal, and made her debut at the age of ten with Montreal Symphony Orchestra, after which Charles Dutoit invited her as soloist on the orchestra’s tour to Asia. She has since performed with orchestras around the world, including Philadelphia Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Seoul Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, and Israel Chamber Orchestra, as well as all the major orchestras in Canada, among them the Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver Symphonies and National Arts Centre Orchestra. She has appeared with conductors such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Vladimir Spivakov, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Vasily Petrenko. Her solo discography includes the - 13 - first volume of her recording of György Ligeti’s complete piano works on the Dynamic label, as well as Camille Saint-Saëns: Piano Transcriptions, Mozart & Me, as well as an all-Poulenc and an all-Liszt albums for Signum Classics.
The second volume of Chung’s Ligeti project on the Dynamic label comprises his works for piano four hands and two pianos, and marks the first recorded collaboration between Bax & Chung. The disc garnered the maximum R10 Classica from the French magazine Répertoire and five stars from Fono Forum in Germany. In 2006, the duo released Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals with Fort Worth Symphony under Miguel Harth-Bedoya, with Michael York as narrator. Bax & Chung: Piano Duo appeared on Signum Classics in 2013, pairing Stravinsky’s four-hand version of his ballet Pétrouchka with music by Brahms and Piazzolla.
Together, Bax & Chung have performed in major festivals and concert halls around the world; in 2008 alone, they logged 20,000 miles by train as they toured their four-hand Pétrouchka across the far reaches of Stravinsky’s homeland. They have appeared at international festivals including Verbier in Switzerland; Við Djúpið in Iceland; the opening concert of Chungmu Hall in Seoul, Korea; the Pau Casals, Castilla y León, Torroella de Montgrí, and Pamplona International Festivals in Spain; the Felicja Blumental Festival in Tel Aviv; Lübecker Kammermusikfest and Schloss Elmau in Germany; Ottawa International Chamber Festival in Canada; and Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Mainly Mozart, and Bard Music Festival in the U.S.; besides giving performances in Aruba, Barbados, China, Cyprus, France, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Palestine, Russia, and the United Kingdom. In recent seasons they have performed at New York’s Lincoln Center; with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Chopin Society in Saint Paul, MN; Dumbarton Oaks series in Washington, DC; at Italy’s Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, where Bax assumed the role of Artistic Director in 2017; and at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, playing Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos with the Filarmónica de Buenos Aires.
After meeting at the 1997 Hamamatsu Competition, Bax & Chung carried on a courtship by telephone and email while on separate tours, eventually marrying in 2004. They are also co-artistic directors of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation in Dallas, Texas, created to cultivate the legacy of the Basque pianist and to support young pianists’ careers.