Hsueh-Yung Shen

Hsueh-Yung Shen, born in 1952 near Washington, DC, had an early start in music, beginning composition at eight. He received most of his musical training with Nadia Boulanger in France, between 1962 and 1966, and also studied with Darius Milhaud in 1967 at Aspen, Colorado, and Leon Kirchner and Lukas Foss at Harvard University between 1969 and 1973. He received his DMA in composition from Stanford University in 1980, and taught at Stanford for two years, and at Harvard for four years. Since 1987 he has lived in the Austin area in Texas, where he is timpanist with the Austin Lyric Opera, and taught at Southwestern University for 16 years in music theory.   His works have been featured nationally in groups such as the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Concord String Quartet, Grand Teton Music Festival, and the "Suzuki and Friends" chamber ensemble in Indianapolis. In 1998 he made his Scandinavian debut with three works performed at the Summartónar Festival in the Færoe Islands. His Concertino, written for the Aldubáran Ensemble, was performed and recorded on TUTL in the Færoes in 2002. Recent performances include the Met Orchestra with Legend, with Greg Zuber as soloist, in October 2002, and the American Composers Orchestra in March 2003 in New York with Autumn Fall. He made his London debut in 2005 with the eight-violin Prelude and Scherzo performed by the Menuhin School at Wigmore Hall. Albany Records has released And Then, Things Changed for flute and piano with Jan Vinci and Hugh Sung, and Polar Nights with the Corona Guitar Quartet from Copenhagen, and in 2010 the Corona Quartet premiered the Sinfonia Concertante with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra in Vilnius.