Biography
Levi Chen, a composer and guitarist who established the trio Celtic Zen alongside harpist Lisa Franco and cymbalist Michael Masley, entered the world as a first-generation Chinese-American in the Midwest yet later resided across Taiwan, France, Italy, and Switzerland while mastering five languages.
By the age of ten, when he first picked up the guitar, Chen had already journeyed repeatedly with his family to visit grandparents in Taiwan. During his junior year in 1981, his parents dispatched the headstrong teenager to a Swiss boarding school, an experience he later credited with reshaping his outlook and broadening his perspective. Building on that shift, he enrolled at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, concentrating on graphic arts, architecture, and music under the guidance of musicologist Roland Wiggins. In 1984 he spent eleven months with Syracuse University’s program in Florence, Italy, acquiring fluent Italian while busking as a minstrel in the Piazza Signoria. Relocating to Boston in 1987, Chen took a position at E.U. Wurlitzer Music & Pro Audio that placed him among Berklee School of Music students and acquainted him with the technical dimensions of recording. Returning to Taiwan for several months beginning in March 1989 in hopes of becoming the Chinese Jimi Hendrix, he encountered an Asian pop landscape that left him disillusioned; from there he moved to the south of France and joined the band the Immigrants.
Chen settled permanently in Los Angeles in 1990 and launched his own imprint, Yin Yang Records, three years later. His debut release, 1994’s Liquid Gardens: Tao, presented solo acoustic and electric guitar. The follow-up, Liquid Gardens: Haiki Moon, featured Chen on guitar, fretless bass, Chapman Stick, and gu zheng. Meditation of My Soul, issued in 1995, highlighted duets between guitar and gu zheng. Two years afterward he unveiled Celtic Zen, performed with the ensemble of the same name that unites harpist Lisa Franco and Michael Masley on cymbalom; ten additional musicians supplied the album’s predominantly acoustic textures, save for the Stratocaster guitar.
Chen’s principal instruments remain a circa-1976 Fender Stratocaster and the gu zheng, a steel-stringed Chinese zither akin to the Japanese koto. Years of experimentation have enabled him to replicate the gu zheng’s timbre on guitar and conversely, employing delayed echoes to perform simultaneous call-and-response passages on both. His guitar can further evoke whales and dolphins, cello, erhu, and assorted synthesizer textures. Additional fluency extends to Chapman Stick, acoustic guitar, fretted and fretless bass, synthesizer, and piano.
Visually, Chen’s long, flowing black hair echoes the appearance of Kitaro. He continues to log extended hours performing as a street musician, regarding the act of music-making as a meditative practice. Of his outlook he states, “I believe in LIFE, truth, beauty, peace, God, and nothing. I’m a Romantic Zen Taoist Rasta.”
By the age of ten, when he first picked up the guitar, Chen had already journeyed repeatedly with his family to visit grandparents in Taiwan. During his junior year in 1981, his parents dispatched the headstrong teenager to a Swiss boarding school, an experience he later credited with reshaping his outlook and broadening his perspective. Building on that shift, he enrolled at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, concentrating on graphic arts, architecture, and music under the guidance of musicologist Roland Wiggins. In 1984 he spent eleven months with Syracuse University’s program in Florence, Italy, acquiring fluent Italian while busking as a minstrel in the Piazza Signoria. Relocating to Boston in 1987, Chen took a position at E.U. Wurlitzer Music & Pro Audio that placed him among Berklee School of Music students and acquainted him with the technical dimensions of recording. Returning to Taiwan for several months beginning in March 1989 in hopes of becoming the Chinese Jimi Hendrix, he encountered an Asian pop landscape that left him disillusioned; from there he moved to the south of France and joined the band the Immigrants.
Chen settled permanently in Los Angeles in 1990 and launched his own imprint, Yin Yang Records, three years later. His debut release, 1994’s Liquid Gardens: Tao, presented solo acoustic and electric guitar. The follow-up, Liquid Gardens: Haiki Moon, featured Chen on guitar, fretless bass, Chapman Stick, and gu zheng. Meditation of My Soul, issued in 1995, highlighted duets between guitar and gu zheng. Two years afterward he unveiled Celtic Zen, performed with the ensemble of the same name that unites harpist Lisa Franco and Michael Masley on cymbalom; ten additional musicians supplied the album’s predominantly acoustic textures, save for the Stratocaster guitar.
Chen’s principal instruments remain a circa-1976 Fender Stratocaster and the gu zheng, a steel-stringed Chinese zither akin to the Japanese koto. Years of experimentation have enabled him to replicate the gu zheng’s timbre on guitar and conversely, employing delayed echoes to perform simultaneous call-and-response passages on both. His guitar can further evoke whales and dolphins, cello, erhu, and assorted synthesizer textures. Additional fluency extends to Chapman Stick, acoustic guitar, fretted and fretless bass, synthesizer, and piano.
Visually, Chen’s long, flowing black hair echoes the appearance of Kitaro. He continues to log extended hours performing as a street musician, regarding the act of music-making as a meditative practice. Of his outlook he states, “I believe in LIFE, truth, beauty, peace, God, and nothing. I’m a Romantic Zen Taoist Rasta.”
Albums
