Biography

Anna da Silva Chen has established a reputation as one of Australia’s finest and most versatile young violinists, equally at home as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician.

As a soloist she has appeared with major orchestras such as the Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland, Tasmanian and Canberra Symphony Orchestras as well as several youth and community orchestras across Australia. International highlights include performances with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra in Germany at the invitation of Nicholas Milton AM, and her solo debut in Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana with the SCM Wind Symphony Orchestra. Anna has maintained a great artistic curiosity for a wide variety of concertos over the years; she performed Elgar’s and Tchaikovsky’s concertos with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Saint-Saëns’ Concerto No. 3 with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Vaughan-Williams’ The Lark Ascending with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven’s Concerto and Mozart’s 5th Concerto with Steel City Strings, Sibelius’ Concerto with several orchestras from 2016-2018, Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 with Ensemble Apex and West Phil, He/Chen’s Butterfly Lovers’ Concerto with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, and Chausson’s Concerto for violin, piano and string quartet with the Australia Piano Quartet.

An avid chamber musician, Anna is a founding violinist of the Alma Moodie Quartet and worked extensively as artist-in-residence with the Australia Piano Quartet. She also appears with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Selby & Friends, Australia Ensemble, ACO Collective, Ensemble Q, Omega Ensemble, and as a featured artist in the Canberra International Music Festival and Orlando Festival in the Netherlands. Her most influential chamber music teachers include Eberhard Feltz, Johannes Meissl and John Harding. Anna also performs regularly as a recitalist and has cherished opportunities to work with leading pianists including Shuann Cai, Daniel de Borah, Edward Neeman and Lee Dionne.  

By the age of 15, Anna was winner of the Kendall National Violin Competition, National Fine Music Young Virtuoso Award and National Youth Concerto Competition, semi-finalist in the 2012 Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition and a frequent finalist of the ABC Young Performers Awards. More recently, she was one of 22 violinists selected to compete in the Carl Nielsen International Competition, silver medal winner in the Vienna International Music Competition, prize winner in the Gisborne International Music Competition, and has twice been nominated for the Freedman Fellowship Awards.  

After private studies with Professor Alice Waten and Dr Robin Wilson, Anna joined Professor Mihaela Martin’s class at the Cologne University of Music. Anna holds a Bachelor's degree from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where she won the university’s 2016 concerto competition and was awarded University of Sydney Academic Merit Prizes, the Corrina Taylor Memorial Prize and the Miss Ada Thompson Scholarship for Postgraduate Students.