Yip Chi Yuen (Chinese: 葉智源) was born to a middle-class family in Hong Kong. His first contact with music came from the family piano, on which his mother would sometimes play nursery rhymes and his father would serenade his mother with this one song. He soon began taking an interest and started watching his mother at the piano when he was two. At that point however, there was no indication whether he actually enjoyed the music or if he simply thought his mother’s fingers delicious.

Known affectionately in his family as Yuen Yuen, he would later spend significant part of his childhood plonking at keyboard toys, playing back nursery rhymes he had heard. With the encouragement of his mother, Yuen Yuen started taking lessons at the age of seven. In 2002, his family emigrated to the UK and Yuen Yuen enrolled in Chetham’s School of Music in 2007, where he studied with Mr Simon Bottomley.

Yuen Yuen continued his musical studies at the Royal Northern College of Music with acclaimed pianist Stephen Savage, and then with Sally Ann Macleod who had studied with Vlado Perlemuter, a distinguished interpreter of Chopin. During his training at the RNCM, he benefited immensely from lessons with visiting artists such as Michel Beroff and Phillip Cassard. During the last years of his studies, he developed a passion for teaching under the guidance of Helen Krizos.

Perhaps due to his experiences living in a foreign country, Yuen Yuen has a particular affinity with works of Chopin, a composer with whom he shares a deep emotional connection. The great composer’s influence can be found most evidently in Yuen Yuen’s own compositions and performances.

As a performer, Yuen Yuen has worked as a hotel pianist, performed in solo recitals, and made appearances in Musicthon as well as Comic Relief to raise funds for local charities. Yuen Yuen also enjoys immensely the process of teaching and inspiring the next generation of pianists. Tailoring his approach to meet the goals and needs of his pupils, he always takes pleasure in finding creative solutions, making the previously impossible, possible.