Ray Chen

Winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition (2009) and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition (2008), Ray Chen is among the most compelling young violinists today. His friend and mentor Maxim Vengerov once stated that “Ray has proven himself to be a very pure musician with great qualities such as a beautiful youthful tone, vitality and lightness. He has all the skills of a truly musical interpreter.”

Ray Chen’s first album Virtuoso, released worldwide on Sony Classical, won the prestigious Echo Klassik award in 2011. The recording has received glowing reviews from major media outlets including The Times and Chicago Tribune, which named it the “CD of the week.” Following the success of this album, Ray Chen was profiled by The Strad and Gramophone magazines as “the one to watch.” His 2011 recital tour featuring the repertoire of Virtuoso took him to Tokyo, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Zurich and Dresden.

Ray Chen continues to win the admiration of fans and fellow musicians worldwide. He has received standing ovations at Ravinia and in Schleswig-Holstein, and his Verbier and Dresden Festival debuts resulted in immediate re-engagements. Other recent highlights of Ray’s rapidly developing career include successful debuts with the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, the Orquesta Nacional de España, Munich’s Philharmonie and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in addition to a sell-out performance with the Seoul Philharmonic under Maestro Myung-Whun Chung at the Asian Games Festival in Guangzhou. He is eagerly anticipating upcoming engagements with the Gewandhausorchester, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra as well as the televised performance of the Nobel Prize concert in Stockholm with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Maestro Eschenbach.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Australia, Ray Chen entered the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of fifteen, where he studied under Aaron Rosand. Ray plays the 1721 “Macmillan” Stradivarius, provided as part of the award for winning the 2008–09 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York.