Lydia Wenchen Kuo, Executive Director

Executive Director

Kuo, Wen-Chen

Born in Taipei, Kuo began to learn music from an early age. She majored political theory and graduated from the Political Science Department of the National Taiwan University and the EMBA program in Art Culture Industry Design and Management of the Taipei University of Education. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Institute of Art Management and Cultural Policy of the National Taiwan University of Arts. In 2014, she went to Edinburgh to participate “The Atelier for Young Festival Manager” held by the European Festival of Arts Association (EFA) and the Edinburgh Festival. In 2016, she went to the Hong Kong Institute of Education to participate in the “Global Practices in Cultural Management” program. In 2018, she was invited by the British Council to participate in the “UK-Taiwan Exchange Programme Inclusive Arts-Creativity with Older People”.

Highly experienced, she used to work for Taipei Symphony Orchestra, National Performing Arts Center, and Taishin Bank Culture and Arts Foundation. Throughout her years working on art management and administration, she has accumulated professional management experience in terms of performance venues, orchestra operation, international connection, and program planning and productions. Her crucial projects include the performances of the opera diva, Anna Netrebko, the globally renowned EIC (Ensemble InterContemporain), which is known for contemporary music performance, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam and other concerts. She is the planner of serial concert programs as “Chamber Music” and “Ways to Listen to the World Series” and “Innovation Series”. She produced Fall for Eileen Chang, and some NTCH opera workshops as La bella dormente nel bosco, Hänsel und Gretel and L’Enfant et les Sortileges. She also served as the tour manager of overseas concerts for Taipei Symphony Orchestra.

Since January 2017, she had become Deputy Director of Taipei Symphony Orchestra; during the term of her service, she has advocated cultural citizenship and has pioneered braille opera program notes, and also organized the U. S. tour for the orchestra, 26 years apart from its last time there. Among others, Kuo has dedicated to work on the international connection and planned the Mandarin version premiere of the internationally renowned production of “Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood” and Heiner Goebbels’ staged concert, Surrogate Cities, at the Taipei MRT Beitou Depot as its premiere in Asia.

She has been the Executive Director of the Taiwan Philharmonic (the National Symphony Orchestra) since June 2018 , and the Adjunct Associate Professor of the department of music of Chinese Culture University since 2021.