From her teenage years, pianist Gloria Chien has been an important presence on the American chamber music scene. She is also an educator. A major breakthrough for Chien was a win at the Boston Symphony Concerto Competition, which carried with it the chance to appear as a soloist with the Boston Symphony itself under conductor Thomas Dausgaard. Chien made her recording debut in 2004 on the Chandos label, backing violinist Joanna Kurkowicz in a program of music by Grazyna Bacewicz. In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and served as its artistic director. In 2017, she and her husband, Soonvin Kim, became co-artistic directors of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. Chien and clarinetist Anthony McGill released the album Here with You: The Brahms Sonatas in 2021.