Carolyn Shen

Carolyn Shen, born in Essen-Werden in 1999, has been playing the violin since she was six years old, after receiving two years of early education on the recorder. She began at the Rhein-Kreis-Neuss Music School, transferred to the Mönchengladbach Music School to study with Michalina Knull-Mausen in 2009, and became a junior student at the Robert Schumann University of Music under Prof. Yamei Yu in 2015. At the age of 17, she completed her school education with the Abitur and began her full-time studies with Prof. Yamei Yu in the fall of 2017. Since 2020, she has received the Germany Scholarship from her university. In 2023, she began her studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington with Prof. Grigory Kalinovsky and graduated in May 2025 with a Master of Music degree. Master classes with renowned professors, including Prof. Stephan Picard, Prof. Ulf Hoelscher, Prof. Sophia Jaffé, and Prof. Ulf Schneider, enriched her career. She is a multiple award winner, including several times in the “Jugend musiziert” competition at regional, state, and national levels in categories of chamber music ensembles as well as soloists. In 2016, she won first prize at the MusikTalente competition and in 2017 the Lions Music Promotion Prize, as well as the audience prize. She was a member of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Youth Orchestra and the German National Youth Orchestra. She has also performed on several occasions with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and the Kammerphilharmonie Köln. In 2017, she was selected to perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Violin Concerto in G major with the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra at a benefit concert in the Konzerthaus Dortmund under the baton of principal conductor Motonori Kobayashi. Carolyn also plays a lot of chamber music and won first prize in the Rometsch Competition at her university with her quartet in 2022.