Dr. Yiwen Shen is a Chinese composer, conductor, and pianist.
Shen’s compositions have been performed in all six habitable continents. His awards include the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, Gena Raps String Quartet Award, and Arthur Friedman Prize; first prize from SCI/ASCAP Composition Commission; second prize from the First China Clarinet Composition Competition; winner of the Nashville Symphony’s Composer Lab, Minnesota Orchestra’s Composer Institute, and Albany Symphony’s Composer to Center Stage Competition; two top prizes from Chinese National Composition Competitions, Chinese Golden Bell Award, and Distinguished Achievement of the Year in Music Composition in Shanghai.
Other highlights include major orchestral premieres with the Minnesota Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, American Symphony, Albany Symphony, Beijing Symphony, Shanghai Symphony, Shanghai Opera House Orchestra, Bowling Green Philharmonic, Juilliard Orchestra, and Bard Conservatory Orchestra for its first international tour of China. He has successfully collaborated with renowned conductors, including Osmo Vänskä, Giancarlo Guerrero, David Alan Miller, Leon Botstein, Emily Freeman Brown, Jeffrey Milarsky, Zhang Guoyong, Zhang Yi, Zhang Jiemin, and Lin Daye.
His full-length ballet, The Crane Calling, premiered in 2015, was commissioned by the National Ballet of China, following the great success of a preceding collaboration Hamlet in 2014. The Crane Calling toured over 30 cities in China and received its European debut in 2017 and North American debut in 2018. He also had works commissioned by and premiered at the Carnegie Hall. In 2018, he was commissioned by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and the MISA Festival to launch the first self-produced symphonic film concert "The Book of Heaven". His music has also been commissioned and performed by ensembles such as Aeolus String Quartet, Omer String Quartet, Colorado String Quartet, Da Capo Chamber Players, Music from China Ensemble, TALEA Ensemble, Dal Niente Ensemble, The New York Virtuoso Singers, among others.
As a conductor, Shen received the 1st Prize at The Second Hiroshima International Conductors Competition, along with the “Orchestra Award”, “Audience Award”, and “Hosokawa Award”. He is also the 1st prizewinner of the Vienna International Conducting Competition "Wiener Schule," the Los Angeles Conducting Competition, and the Atlanta International Conductors Competition, the top prize winner of the BMI Bucharest International Conducting Competition, and the recipient of the President's Award from European Music Academy. He has conducted the Shenzhen Symphony, National Ballet of China Symphony, Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, Hiroshima Wind Orchestra, Hiroshima Festival Orchestra, Silesian Philharmonic, North Czech Philharmonic, Karlovy Vary Symphony, MÁV Symphony, Orchestra of Magna Graecia, Royal Camerata, Bucharest Philharmonic, Bucharest Symphony, Brasov Philharmonic, Joseph Haydn Symphony, Juilliard Orchestra, Tianjin Juilliard Orchestra, Prince George's Philharmonic (MD), University of Maryland's Symphony and Repertoire Orchestras, as well as the Monteux Festival Orchestra.
Shen holds a dual bachelor’s in composition and German studies from Bard College and its conservatory, a master’s in conducting from University of Maryland, and a master’s and doctorate in composition from Juilliard. He currently teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) School of Music, The Tianjin Juilliard School, and the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music.