Chameleon who changes colour very quietly & without attention: pianist/composer Belle Chen on her personal journey through her music

Belle Chen [Photo: Harry Cornish]

London-based Taiwanese-Australian pianist and composer Belle Chen had commercial and critical success with her 2024 album Ravel In The Forest and in August released the single Rise on the Platoon label. Following a sold-out European/UK tour earlier this year, during October and November she is touring China and Australia. Last month, I was lucky enough to be able to catch her in London to chat about her album, her inspirations and her plans.

This year, she has found touring rather intense because she is travelling with a 14-month-old toddler! But audiences have been warm and kind, and she has had some interesting conversations after the show. She tries to talk to audience members after the show finding such interactions rather motivating. When I ask what the audiences get at her shows her response is immediate, ‘You get me’. She performs her original compositions on piano and on synth, and these expose everything about her. 

This year she has been performing music from her album Ravel In The Forest, which she presented at a live show at Kings Place last year. Her concerts include the whole album, the complete concept. 

Whilst the music on the album does evoke the forest, it is also a personal journey inward. Belle comments that everyone has a different journey. And this album was very much about her finding herself as an artist. She grew up in Australia, in SE Queensland, in a forest. Here not much happened yet there was a lot of uncertainty and the sound of the forest brought out the sense of the dark. She wrote the album in London and has since been touring the show based on it.

The show is anchored by seven pieces, but a lot of her performance is improvised. So whilst some pieces are written out fully, others have pocket which are free. She sometimes involves the audience in the improvisations depending on the energy in the room. When space allows, she creates from a blank canvas by getting suggestions from the audience. This can become like a group improvisation if the audience is extrovert. With a stage performance every evening is different, and the show feels really unique. People are different and their memories of the forest are different, which is interesting for her.

With her performances, one thing that she is sure of is that she creates a space that feels safe, using music to create a space that is imaginative, responsive and playful. This allows the audience to take whatever they wish from the evening.

When creating an album she starts with a complex feeling or emotion and then improvises to find the right vessel for this. Then she writes the music out, chipping away at it to find the structure. Sometimes she leaves space for improvisations, and sometimes the improvisations find their way onto the album. She comments that there is something confronting about a room that is silent when you are writing, you have only your mind. If she is in a vulnerable state then interesting things come out.

Whether she is a pianist or a composer first, she can’t decide. She feels she has moved between so many phases and describes herself as like chameleon who changes colour very quietly and without attention. She trained as a classical pianist, with the music of Beethoven being a focus. She then moved on to field recording, working with sound, creating music that was avant garde and experimental. But she had to go around a huge loop to find the confidence to create her own music. Even now, she prefers not to label herself.

She describes herself as a rule-abiding student when younger, studying piano but not composing for herself. But this wasn’t her and it led to a big break. Confidence was a big thing, she was not sure who she was or what she had to say. Her entire journey has been to find herself.

Ten years ago she was manipulating field recordings. Inspired by Steve Reich she stepped away from written material into sound design, finding musicality in environmental sounds. She has been writing for the piano for the last five or six years. She had always played music for herself but had never put it out there.

When we spoke last month, she was about to travel to China for her tour of China and Australia. Then there will be a European tour in 2027, but she needs to leave gaps in order to allow the mind to grow. 

Her new album Blue Grotto is already written and it tracks her journey from the end of Ravel In The Forest to now, reflecting the way she came out of her programme feeling more confident. But also after Ravel In The Forest she fell pregnant and this representing something of a tectonic shift, so that the new album honestly reflects the last two years of her life. 

She comments that it feels as if life pushes forward fast, and the only time she feels normal, feels herself, is whilst on stage.

• Belle Chen’s Blue Grotto EP is released via Platoon on 23 October [pre-save link]
• Belle Chen’s Rise
• Full details of Belle Chen’s tour from her website