On June 25, 2022 Candice Chin, ACMP member violinist from Seattle, died suddenly, shortly after her 46th birthday. Candice is survived by her husband Matthew Briggs, her parents Peter and Esther, her brother Curtis, and her cousins aunts and uncles and the Seattle chamber music community.

I met Candice several years ago when she first joined the ACMP Board, when she and her husband Matthew attended our annual conference in New York City. I was quickly impressed on how smart and funny she was. We quickly bonded over our love food, travel as well as our relative closeness in age and culture.   At our annual post board play ins at a fellow former board member’s house, I was impressed by her high level of sight reading and passion to play well.  

During the early days of the pandemic when things were bad here in Queens, NYC she would take time from her busy schedule checked in on me and generously offered to mail food to me. We had only met each other twice in person before the pandemic set in.  That was the thoughtful and caring person she was.   I will never forget that heartfelt offer during those desperate dark times. 

We often daydreamed about all the wonderful foods we were missing and much of our exchanges is all about Asian dishes. We often exchanged foodie pics and recipes to break up long zoom meetings and while we salivated over each other’s posts.

She was committed to helping bring ACMP into the future and shared her experience, hard work, ideas and skills as an ACMP Board and Committee Member.  Her commitment and love of chamber music included many other organizations other than ACMP and the sudden loss of this vibrant, talented young advocate of chamber music is deeply felt. 

I wished I had the opportunity to spend more time and get to know her better in person. I am grateful for the time I had with Candice. She has surely made a mark in my heart.

– Celeste Chau, NAOC Acting Chair and Former ACMP Board Member

Below are a few other ACMP member tributes to Candice Chin

Peter Aupperle, Chair of ACMP Foundation:

Our major non-ACMP interaction was that when I first joined the Board, I referred her to my violin teacher in NYC. She had been unable to find a decent teacher in Seattle and it was COVID days, so everyone was doing lessons over Zoom. Hence it was easy to take lessons from Jesse Mills, who is an awesome teacher that Stephanie knows too. 

I recall her many texts to me reporting how productive her lessons were and how much she liked being Jesse’s student. When I saw Jesse at a concert, he thanked me profusely for referring such a talented adult student to him. She was working her way through several of the major violin concertos and even traveled to Southern California to meet Jesse in person and to see his trio, The Horszowski piano trio, perform on the west coast. She seemed to get so much joy and fulfillment from studying with him! 

Peter Aupperle  – ACMP Board Member,  ACMP Foundation,  NOAC.  Membership Engagement Committee Chair

Stephanie Griffin, Executive Director of ACMP:

I started my job as Executive Director of ACMP in August 2020, at the height of the pandemic. At that time Candice was still on the Board, and serving as Treasurer. Although I only met her on Zoom, we developed an excellent rapport. As someone with an MBA and an impressive background in finance, she had a lot of patience with someone (me) with no financial background at all. She was able to see through that and realize that we actually had the same perspective on budgets, and more importantly – a shared passion for cats, and the viola, which she was just beginning to explore. I am deeply saddened that Candice, with so much going on and so much to look forward to, was taken away from us so terribly soon and my deepest condolences go out to her husband, family and all of her close friends in Seattle.

Henri van den Hombergh, Chair of the ACMP International Ambassador’s Council:

For me, Candice represented a unique period in the board of ACMP to have someone young in the board and even more I do remember her very infectious grin and laugh.

If you would like to share a story or remembrance of Candice Chin, please email Stephanie at sgriffin@acmp.net. We will add your story to this article.