Sherry Grant

I’m a Taiwan-born New Zealand concert pianist, cellist, haiku poet, festival organiser and radio podcaster. Although not yet trained as a violist, my passion for the viola resulted in about 20 new viola and piano works written for me between 2019 and 2024, premiered with various violists from around the world, including several of the IVS board members. I particularly enjoy performing contemporary music to celebrate the talent of my composer friends, and quite often I combine poetry and visual arts in my multimedia concerts and festivals. Festivals and concerts tours I have organised and performed in include War and Peace Festival (2019), 100 Years Journey (2019), Hindemith & Copland Festival (2021), International Scriabin 150 Festival (2022), International KM100NZ Festival (2023), Catch23 (2023), Child of the Sun (2023) and Vio-Latino (2024). Upcoming ones are International Scriabin 2025 Festival (2025) and Music Down Under Festival (2026), a mixture of online gatherings and in-person concerts. Violists I have collaborated in concerts to date are Milan Milisavljević (USA/Canada), Robert Ashworth (NZ/Canada), Donald Maurice (NZ), Emlyn Stam (Netherlands/Canada) and Diane Phoenix-Neal (USA).

As the mother of four musical children who play woodwind instruments, I have also taken up the French horn in September 2024 and is a member of the Auckland Wind Orchestra since February 2025. I am the author of two poetry books ‘Bat Girl’ (2021) and ‘Being Katherine’ (2023), both illustrated by my youngest daughter Zoe Grant. Together Zoe and I edit ‘Haiku Zoo Journal’ and ‘Raining Rengay’ and co-host International Rengay Gatherings. Our ambition is to inspire 1 billion people around the world. I also interview creative people and make monthly “Next Golden Age” radio podcasts to curate literature, poetry, music and arts from around the globe. I am also writing a book about 3 NZ female composers, which I hope to publish before the Music Down Under Festival in November 2026.

I am very lucky to have performed viola recitals (as a pianist) at the 2022 (USA), 2023 (Thailand) and 2024 (Brazil) International Viola Congresses and will be performing in the 2026 (Paris) IVC and 2026 (USA) AVS Festival. My short term goal is to revivify ANZVS in my region whereas my long term goals are to bring old and new viola music to be more widely appreciated by non-violists, and also to build a global piano family (in the name of my favourite composer Alexander Scriabin) just as kind and accepting as the IVS viola family! I am starting to build a global network “World Musician Wellness Online” where musicians support one another to prevent injuries and maintain physical as well as mental wellbeing. In my ideal world, arts, music and poetry are greatly valued and become the driving forces for the advancement of societies. I have learned love for nature through haiku, kindness and modesty from this international viola family and pursuit for truth through Scriabin, and together I am certain they lead to the State of Equilibrium and Harmony in the Next Golden Age.