Yibai Chen began taking cello lessons at the age of five from Meijuan Liu at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He then studied under Danjulo Ishizaka at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and is now engaged in further studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Basle. He has taken part in numerous masterclasses, taught by David Geringas, Jens Peter Maintz, Jian Wang, Martti Rousi, Liwei Qin, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Gabriel Schwabe, and Wen-Sinn Yang, and by the violinist Daniel Hope and the pianist Jacques Ammon. Yibai Chen has won third prize at the Lutosławski competition in Warsaw, second prize at the Enescu competition in Romania, and fifth prize at the Tchaikovsky competition (at the age of seventeen). He has performed with the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, the Polish National Opera, the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gauteng Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Cape Town Philharmonic, among others.