Nguyễn Thanh Thủy

Nguyễn Thanh Thủy is a leading đàn tranh player and music researcher. She was born into a theatre family and was raised with  traditional Vietnamese music from an early age in Hà Nội. She studied at the Hanoi Conservatory of Music where she received her diploma in 1998, followed by a Master of Arts at the Institute of Cultural Studies in 2003. She has received many distinctions including the First Prize and the Outstanding Traditional Music Performer Prize in the National Competition of Đàn Tranh Talents in 1998.

She has toured in Asia, Europe and the USA. Nguyễn Thanh Thủy has recorded several CD’s as soloist with orchestra and solo CDs, which were released by Phương Nam Film Vietnam; by dB Productions Sweden; by Setola di Maiale Italia and by Neuma Records & Publications USA. She collaborates with composers such as Richard Karpen (US), Kent Olofsson (SE), Nguyễn Thiện Đạo (FR/VN) and Trần Thị Kim Ngọc (VN).

Nguyễn worked at the Vietnam National Academy of Music many years before moving to Sweden for her doctoral study at Lund University in 2012. Between 2021 and 2023 Nguyễn is an international postdoctoral research fellow at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, and at the Institute of Arts, Faculty of Education, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. Her research project focuses on music and identity in diaspora, and was funded by the Swedish Research Council.

She is a founding member of the Vietnamese/Swedish group The Six Tones-a platform for an encounter between traditional and experimental cultures in Asia and the West since 2006.