The Townsville Piano Duo has just begun their journey recently in Townville, Australia. The duo met each other at a piano competition and decided to form a piano piano duet. Currently, Chiacheng Sen resides in the USA while Rhodri Clarke resides in Australia. However, the duo will start new episodes soon after Chiacheng migrates to Australia. They look forward to promoting piano music to as many people as possible.

In 2021, Chiacheng Sen won the Platinum Medal in the North American International
Virtuoso Music Competition. In previous years, she also won the first prize in the
Australian Vocal and Concerto Competition, second prize in the International Music
Competition Grand Prize Virtuoso in Rome, third prize in the Rising Stars Grand Prix
in Berlin, and American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition which
led to her Carnegie Hall debut. She also won first prize in United States Open Music
Competition, second prize in the Performing Arts Scholarship Foundation, Second
prize in International Young Artist Piano Competition in Washington DC. When
Chiacheng Sen was 12, she won her first competition in the Creative Art Competition
hosted by Taiwan Television and Min Sheng Bao. She played Jeux D’eau by Ravel
and won a cash prize of 20000 NTD.
Chiacheng Sen received master degree from the New England Conservatory of
Music and doctoral degree in Piano Performance with full scholarship from UC Santa
Barbara. She worked in the UCSB music department as a collaborative piano
teaching assistant for four years, teaching both undergraduate and graduate
students. After graduation in 2011, Chiacheng worked at East Los Angeles College,
Orange County School of the Arts, and Long Beach City College and other music
schools as piano instructor and staff pianist. In 2018, Chiacheng collaborated with
renowned violinist/ composer Jeremy Cohen from Quartet San Francisco in a
memorial concert of Raymond Scott at Colony Theatre. Besides her career as an
extraordinary pianist with wide interests, she also plays with the Orchestra Collective
of Orange County as a violinist.

The pianist Rhodri Clarke graduated with first class honours from the
Royal College of Music, London. He performs internationally as a piano
soloist, accompanist and chamber musician.
Rhodri’s performing experience is extensive. Last year he completed a
ten-city concert tour of Europe with the opera singer Rolando Villazon and
his chamber music group Bolivar Soloists during which they performed in
some of the world’s most important concert venues, including Berlin’s
Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, London’s Royal Festival Hall and
Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris.
In 2010 Rhodri has toured twice in Latin-America, in Venezuela, with
Edicson Ruiz, a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, showcasing
the music of Latin American composers alongside mainstream classical
composers, and in Mexico, performing Mexican folksongs in new
arrangements again with the tenor Rolando Villazon. Villazon and Rhodri’s
ensemble have recorded these songs on the label Deutsche
Grammaphon; the album, called “Mexico”, was released in September
2010 and is currently featured in classical and latin-american music charts
in several countries worldwide.
In previous years, Rhodri performed as a soloist and accompanist at
Sydney Opera House and New York’s Carnegie Hall and has also given
recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, Berlin’s Philharmonie and the Lucerne
International Music Festival. His several concerto performances include
Beethoven Concerto no.3, Shostakovich Concerto No.2 and Gershwin
Piano Concerto.
For the past two years, Rhodri has lived in the Netherlands where he
collaborated with members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and
Academy and worked as a repetiteur for opera singers.
Rhodri has made several broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 including a live
performance as organ continuo player on the InTune programme with
another of his ensembles The Musicall Compass and as a pianist
accompanying cellist Simon Wallfisch on the Between the Ears
programme.