Described by The New York Times  as “spellbinding” and “delightfully quirky matched with interpretive sensitivity,” Phyllis (2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2019 Cage-Cunningham Fellow) is a composer, pianist and sound artist whose music draws from her tactile exploration of object and sound.
Phyllis started playing the piano at the age of five and came across the toy piano as an adult. As a pianist, she immediately  fell in love with the instrument’s  possibilities. Being bound to no history, the toy piano became her grounds to develop her personal voice, one that reflects her third culture kid experience. The unrefined and raw tone of the instrument inspired Phyllis to  create very personal miniature theatre works (The Memoirist, The Slumber Thief and Down The Rabbit-Hole) in collaboration with her partner and video artist, Rob Dietz. One of her interdisciplinary solo works, Lighting The Dark, was described by the New York Times as “by turns poignant, humorous and virtuosic, Chen’s performance offered a slyly subversive take on issues relating to femininity, technology and power…the looping, spellbinding music…became a fitting tribute to the modest, repetitive, yet quietly heroic work of women.”
Her “Through The Thicket of Stars,” a multi-layered toy piano piece is based on an original scroll painting by children’s author/illustrator Grace Lin. It was premiered at Kaufman Center Piano Dialogues in April 2022.
Phyllis is one of the composers for the one-woman play, The Other Mozart about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s forgotten sister Nannerl,  performed and written by Sylvia Milo. She and co-composer/sound designer Nathan Davis, received the New York Innovative Theatre Award for “Best Original Music in a Play” in 2015.

In 2007, Phyllis founded the UnCaged Toy Piano to promote new works for unusual instruments.  Since its inception, she has received over 200 new pieces from composers around the globe. In 2011, Phyllis launched the first biennial UnCaged Toy Piano Festival, a three day festival featuring new works  and a variety of toy instrumentalists and sound-makers. Each year the festival  has been greeted with great enthusiasm, with audience members crossing state borders and oceans to attend. In 2017, UnCaged Toy Piano collaborated with the Conlon Foundation in the Netherlands featuring the Robot Toy Piano. Selected works were presented as part of the Gaudeamus Muziekwiek at the Museum Speelklok  in Utrecht and the 4th UnCaged Toy Piano Festival in NYC.
Phyllis is one of the founding members of ICEensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, based in New York City. Phyllis has released five albums, three solo albums (Concert Artists Guild, cerumenspoon, New Focus Recordings) and a fourth collaborative album with Indie-band Cuddle Magic on fyo records.