
Biography
Tzu-Chi is a recorder player and music educator from Taiwan.
Her artistic practice spans repertoire from the Renaissance and Baroque to contemporary music, bringing together historically informed performance, improvisation, contemporary creation, and diverse forms of musical expression.
She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Recorder Performance with highest distinction at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, before earning two Master’s degrees in Recorder Performance and Music Education at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (FHNW) in Switzerland. She is currently further expanding her artistic practice through studies in Free Improvisation.
As a founding member of the sféra ensemble, she is deeply engaged with Renaissance polyphony and contemporary music projects. With the ensemble, she won First Prize at the 2020 Tel Aviv International Recorder Competition. She has performed at festivals including the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, ReRenaissance Basel, Festival Alte Musik Zürich, and Grandezze & Meraviglie in Modena. Her concert activities have taken her across Europe and Asia, including Taiwan, Japan, Israel, Greece, Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.
Alongside her performing career, Tzu-Chi teaches at the music schools of Zofingen and Frick in Switzerland. In both her artistic and educational work, she brings together historical knowledge and performance practice through ensemble playing, improvisation, and creative exploration, continually discovering the diverse possibilities of the recorder across different periods, musical languages, and forms of artistic creation.

Events
Ensembles
sféra ensemble
Founded in 2019, sféra ensemble is a recorder consort dedicated to the music of the 15th century. Rooted in historically informed performance, the ensemble explores polyphony through a contemporary artistic perspective, bringing historical repertoire into dialogue with improvisation, voices, new compositions, and experimental performance formats.
In 2020, sféra won First Prize at the Tel Aviv International Recorder Competition. Since then, the ensemble has performed across Europe and internationally, including at the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, Grandezze e Meraviglie in Modena, and Echi Lontani in Cagliari.
A distinctive part of sféra’s sound is its consort of Virdung recorders, built by Adrian Brown after illustrations in Sebastian Virdung’s Musica Getutscht (1511). Rarely heard today, these instruments inspire sféra to explore the sound world of the 15th century from fresh and sometimes unexpected perspectives.

Tawny consort
Tawny Consort was founded in Basel in 2025 by Tzu-Chi Kuo, recorder; Melissa Chen, violin; Tirza Albach, viola da gamba; and Zuguang Xiao, harpsichord. United by a shared dedication to historically informed performance, the four musicians bring together artistic curiosity, stylistic sensitivity, and vivid expressiveness.
Their diverse cultural backgrounds and educational paths merge into a multifaceted shared understanding of sound, shaped by stylistic versatility and refined chamber-music awareness. United by a passion for musical dialogue, the ensemble seeks a sound that resonates with the heart and unfolds the stories waiting to be told.

Media