Gramophone 2023 Young Artist of the Year Stella Chen garnered worldwide attention with her first-prize win at the 2019 Queen Elisabeth Competition, followed by the 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant and 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.

Since then, Stella has appeared across North America, Europe, and Asia in concerto, recital, and chamber music performances. She recently made debuts with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Baltimore Symphony, Belgian National Orchestra, and many others and appeared at the Vienna Musikverein and Berlin Philharmonie. In recital, recent appearances include Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Phillips Collection, Rockport Music Festival, and Nume Festival in Italy. She appears frequently with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center both in New York and on tour.

Stella has appeared as a chamber musician in festivals including the Ravinia, Seattle Chamber Music, Perlman Music Program, Music@Menlo, Bridgehampton, Rockport, Kronberg Academy, and Sarasota. Chamber music partners include Itzhak Perlman, James Ehnes, and Matthew Lipman.

In September 2023, she performed the North American premiere of Jörg Widmann’s Violin Concerto No 2 with the Juilliard Orchestra and the composer conducting. She also premiered a work for violin and orchestra dedicated to her, Solaris by Jonathan Cziner. She has made her debut tour in Japan in January 2024, which had been postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic. In June 2024, she will perform at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw for the first time, with the Brussels Philharmonic.

She received the 2023 Gramophone Young Artist of the Year award for her debut album ‘Stella x Schubert’ with pianist Henry Kramer, laureate of the 2016 Piano Competition. Its major piece is Schubert’s challenging Fantasy in C major, which she performed in her semi-final recital during the 2019 Competition and wrote her dissertation about.

She is the inaugural recipient of the Robert Levin Award from Harvard University, where she was inspired by Robert Levin himself. Teachers and mentors have included Donald Weilerstein, Itzhak Perlman, Miriam Fried, and Catherine Cho. She received her doctorate from the Juilliard School where she serves as teaching assistant to her longtime mentor Li Lin.

Stella plays the 1720 General Kyd Stradivarius, on generous loan from Dr. Ryuji Ueno and Rare Violins In Consortium, Artists and Benefactors Collaborative and the 1708 Huggins Stradivarius courtesy of the Nippon Music Foundation.

Teachers

2017- : Li Lin
2017- : Catherine Cho
2011- : Donald Weilerstein
2014 - 2016 : Miriam Fried
2010 - 2011: Itzhak Perlman

Degrees

2016 - : DMA, The Juilliard School
2016 : MM, New England Conservatory

Concerts

2018: SOPAC, South Orange Performing Arts Center, Recital with Tomer Gewirtzman
2018: Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, New Juilliard Ensemble, The New Juilliard Ensemble, Joel Sachs
2018: Chateau d'Oex, Le Bois qui Chante, Recital with Kristina ROhn
2018: Chester Meeting House, Robbie Collomore Recital Series, Recital with Tomer Gewirtzman
2018: Altenburg Castle, Boston Youth Symphony, BYS, Federico Cortese2016: Paine Hall, Bach Society Orchestra, Bach Society Orchestra, Sasha Scolnik-Brower
2017: Sion, Switzerland, Sion Festival, Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne, Gabor Takacs-Nagy
2016: The Academy of Arts and Letters, Cambridge, The Academy of Arts and Letters, Cambridge, Recital with Jayoung Kim
2014: Sanders Theatre, Israel, Jordan, Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Federico Cortese

Competitions

2017: 2nd, Audience, Commissioned Work, Tibor Varga International Competition
2015: Winner, Robert Levin Prize
2008: 4th, Menuhin International Violin Competition Senior Category
2006: 5th, Menuhin International Violin Competition Junior Category