Stella Chen, violin
The first prize winner of the 2019 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition, American violinist Stella Chen has been praised by the Wall Street Journal as a “rising star to watch” and by Strad magazine for her “warm sound and long musical lines”. Stella has appeared with numerous orchestras including the Belgian National Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Brussels Philharmonic, Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, Orquestra Filarmónica de Medellín, London Chamber Orchestra, and Welsh National Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Stella is also the first recipient of the Robert Levin Award from Harvard University, the top prize winner of the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition and youngest ever prize winner of the Menuhin Competition. She has performed as soloist at venues such as the Kennedy Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago. Other noteworthy ventures include performances in Bhutan, Jordan, Israel, Cuba, and Colombia. She has appeared at festivals including the Perlman Music Program, Music@Menlo, the Sarasota Music Festival, Ravinia, and YellowBarn. Stella has collaborated with such notable artists as Itzhak Perlman, Robert Levin, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Miriam Fried, Matt Lipman, Federico Cortese, and the Silk Road Ensemble.
Through the Harvard/New England Conservatory Dual Degree Program, Stella received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology with honors from Harvard and a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory. Currently, Stella is a C.V. Starr doctoral candidate at the Juilliard School, where she studies with Li Lin, Donald Weilerstein, and Catherine Cho. Former teachers include Itzhak Perlman and Miriam Fried. She plays the ‘Huggins’ 1708 Stradivarius violin, generously on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.