At age 16, Chandra Xu made her Carnegie Hall debut after winning honorable mention in the American Protégé International Piano Competition. She has performed solo piano throughout Colorado, Iowa, Florida, and New York, including appearances at the Apollo Theater. Most recently, Chandra performed at the Park Avenue Armory in the North American premiere of 11,000 Strings by Georg Friedrich Haas, a performance later named among The New York Times’ Best Classical Performances of 2025. Her festival engagements include the European American Musical Alliance (Paris), Josef Gingold Chamber Music Festival (Miami), Puerto Piano (San Juan), Dino Ciani Festival (Italy), and Chandra has been featured in masterclasses with Olga Kern, Alexander Kobrin, Peter Takács, Angela Cheng, Jeffrey Cohen, Victor Rosenbaum, Wendy Chen, and Vicki Chow.

An avid chamber musician, Chandra won first prize in the chamber category of the Swiss International Music Competition and has performed with leading musicians from the Metropolitan Opera, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and Charleston Symphony Orchestra, including Rafael Figueroa, Gary Levinson, Yuriy Bekker, and Agata Miklavc, as well as with concert pianist Emile Naoumoff. She has also appeared as a pianist with Colorado’s Front Range Youth Symphony, in which she served as principal second violinist; highlights of her violin career include performing in the Colorado All-State Orchestra and at the Wolfsonian-FIU.

Chandra frequently collaborates with composers to record and perform their compositions across the U.S. With the NYU O1 Orchestra, Chandra participated in the premieres of student film scores. Her own compositions have been recorded by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. Drawing inspiration from people, places, art, and literature, Chandra blends orchestral and textural landscapes using strong melodies, acoustic sounds, and extended techniques. She has collaborated with businesses, directors, and schools, composing music for animations, short films, a video game, and a Spotify podcast trailer for which she also designed the script and recorded the audio.

Chandra holds a Master of Music from New York University in Music Theory and Composition: Screen Scoring, where she studied composition with Jamie Lawrence, Alba Torremocha, and Ezequiel Viñao. She also holds a Bachelor of Music from NYU in Piano Performance and Journalism, where she studied piano with Jeffrey Swann. Previous piano teachers include Ella Stang (pupil of Zoltán Kodály) and Andrew Cooperstock.