People’s Artist and People’s Teacher Thai Thi Lien is one of the first female pianists in Vietnam and a co-founder of the Vietnam National Academy of Music.
People’s Artist, People’s Teacher Thai Thi Lien, teacher of many Vietnamese pianists, passed away on January 31, at home, at the age of 105.
Ms. Thai Thi Lien was born on August 4, 1918 in Cho Lon, Ho Chi Minh City into a family of great intellectuals. Her father is engineer Thai Van Lan, one of the first Vietnamese electrical engineers to graduate in France. Her brother, lawyer Thai Van Lung, was a revolutionary activist who died in 1946 and his name was given to a street in the center of the city. Her older sister is the artist Thai Thi Lang, Vietnam’s first female composer, the first Vietnamese pianist to graduate from the Paris Conservatory and has toured around the world.
Grandma Thai Thi Lien She is one of the first female pianists in Vietnam and one of the seven founding members of the Vietnam National Academy of Music. She used to hold the position of the first Dean of the Academy’s Piano Department, and also participated in compiling the first set of piano textbooks.
In 1946, she went to France to study abroad and passed the entrance exam to the Paris Conservatory of Music. Then, she married revolutionary Tran Ngoc Danh, then head of the delegation of the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (brother of General Secretary Tran Phu). After that, she returned home with her husband in the Viet Bac war zone and had two children, People’s Teacher Tran Thu Haformer Director National music academy Vietnam and architect Tran Thanh Binh – who designed the Grand Concert Hall of the Vietnam National Academy of Music.
After her husband passed away for a while, she married the famous musician-poet Dang Dinh Hung and gave birth to People’s Artist Dang Thai Son – The first Asian artist to win the First Prize of the Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition in 1980.
When she is old, she still plays the piano every day. In 2017, the “big tree” of Vietnamese classical music once once more returned to the stage at the age of centennial, giving an emotional piano melody to generations of students and music-loving listeners. music in the program “Hundred golden autumn.” The music night gathered many talented pianists who are her children and students
