Mr. Yin-feng Keynes Chen

MUSIC DIRECTOR – Longmont Youth Symphony Orchestra

Mr. Yin-feng Keynes Chen, an award-winning musician, is an active concert violinist, conductor, and music educator.

He began his violin studying at the age of four, entered Chongqing School of the Arts at age 10, then the prestigious Shanghai Music conservatory at age thirteen. Mr. Chen received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder). He was also selected as the first violinist of CU Boulder’s Graduate String Quartet in Residence.

Currently, Mr. Chen holds positions as the Concertmaster of the Boulder Symphony since 2012; the President, violin instructor, Chamber Ensemble Coach at the Flatirons Strings Academy in Boulder, Colorado since 2005; and he is also the Music Director of the Longmont Youth Symphony in Colorado since 2007.

Besides performing regularly during the past many years as a violinist with most of the regional major orchestras, he also was the Executive Director at the A Mid-Summer Day’s Dream summer music camp from 2004-2015; Artistic Director and Chamber Music Director of the Boulder Youth Symphony for five years; Conductor of the Colorado Youth Symphony’s Philharmonia Orchestra for five years; Conductor of the Greater Boulder Youth Orchestra for one year; principal violin instructor at the Englewood Arts for Three years.

In the summer of 2010, Mr. Chen lead a successful youth symphony tour in China for 18 days and visited eight different cities and performed at major concert halls and at many schools in China. In addition to performing concerts there, Mr. Chen was invited to conduct chamber music master classes at the following schools: the famous China Central Music Conservator, Beijing; the prestigious China Music Conservatory, Beijing; and the South-China Normal University, Guangzhou. In recent years Mr. Chen has been frequently invited to conduct lectures and master-classes in various music institutions and schools mostly in Guangzhou and Sichuan provinces in China. Since 2017, Singapore has been added to this list as well.

Mr. Chen has received many prestigious titles and awards through out his musical and educational career. He was awarded as the Artist of the Year of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Multicultural Awards in the Front Range area in 2016; First Prize winner in the 2002 Bruce Ekstrand Music Competition and its Audience’s Award with his former quartet-Nacht Quartet; Performance Teaching Assistant at CU Boulder; winner of both the State and Regional division of the Music Teachers’ National Association Music Competition in 2001; First Prize winner of University of Colorado’s Concerto Competition in 2000; the recipient of the Denés Korómzay Chamber Music Award in 1999.