Born in Chang-Hua County, Chih-Sheng Chen began studying the erhu string-instrument as a child and in senior high school and university was musical director of the Chinese Music Association Orchestra. Despite this, he majored in biochemistry, and people are constantly surprised that someone with a scientific background should have chosen to pursue an artistic career, which demands a completely different sensibility.

‘Chinese music is my career ambition,’ he says.

In 2006 he founded the Little Giant Chinese Orchestra in order to contribute to the spreading of Chinese music throughout the world, acting as Music Director. Initially there were only 10 si-zhu musicians, but the ensemble was soon expanded to a major orchestra of 70 members. In five years of training and practice, the Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra has matured into an ensemble of both technical and artistic proficiency, and represents a new generation in the history of the Chinese orchestra.

In 2002, he performed his debut concert as a conductor together with the Dizi master Xun-Fa Yu as part of the concert tour ‘Peony Pavilion – Xun-Fa Yu’s Dizi Art’. He has collaborated with numerous Chinese instrument soloists: among others Xun-Fa Yu (dizi), Hsi-Rong Wang (pipa), Ke-Mei Jiang (banhu), Jiang-Bin Liu (suona), Tze-You Lin (suona), Ying Wang (erhu), Hui Lee (percussion), Wei-Wei Lan (pipa), Ming-Yu Wang (erhu), etc.

He is currently the Music Director of the Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra, a musician in the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, assistant conductor in the Youth Chinese Orchestra of the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, and a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Microbiology and Biochemistry at the National Taiwan University (NTU).

His passion and primary motivation is the bringing of emotionally moving performances of Chinese music to a wide public.