An award-win­ning and clas­si­cal­ly trained pipa vir­tu­oso, Shen­shen Zhang is cel­e­brat­ed for her ele­gant ren­di­tions and del­i­cate lyri­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese pipa reper­toires, earn­ing recog­ni­tion in both Asia and Amer­i­ca. Through­out her career, she has par­tic­i­pat­ed in numer­ous pre­mieres and has had the hon­or of per­form­ing with excep­tion­al inter­na­tion­al artists, includ­ing the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny, Los Ange­les Cham­ber Orches­tra, Hous­ton Grand Opera, and Sym­pho­ny San Jose, among oth­ers. Her solo album, SERENITY, fea­tures s a col­lec­tion of tra­di­tion­al pipa mas­ter­pieces, while her orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions for the pipa duet album, SHENS­duo, received two Sil­ver Medals from the Glob­al Music Awards in 2024. Shen­shen also had the priv­i­lege of record­ing the pipa sound sam­ple library for Apple’s Garage­Band App in 2016. She is on the pipa fac­ul­ty at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty and holds a B.A. in per­for­mance from the Cen­tral Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music in Bei­jing and an M.A. in musi­col­o­gy from Xia­men Uni­ver­si­ty. Born in Wen­zhou, Chi­na, she cur­rent­ly resides in Sil­i­con Val­ley, California.

(Lat­est edit ver­sion, Feb­ru­ary, 2024)

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A native of Chi­na, Ms. Zhang began play­ing the pipa at the age of nine while still liv­ing in her home­town of Wen­zhou, Zhe­jiang Province, in south­east Chi­na. She played music with her moth­er, who ini­tial­ly rec­og­nized her tal­ent, hav­ing played the pipa her­self from an ear­ly age. Soon after, Ms. Zhang enrolled in the Wen­zhou Junior Arts School and made her solo debut at age 11.

At age 13, fol­low­ing a mul­ti-lev­el music and gen­er­al edu­ca­tion assess­ment of pipa stu­dents from all regions of Chi­na, Ms. Zhang was for­tu­nate to be select­ed for the Pipa Major at the Prepara­to­ry School affil­i­at­ed with the pres­ti­gious Cen­tral Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music in Bei­jing. She grad­u­at­ed from the school with an excel­lent aca­d­e­m­ic record. After grad­u­a­tion, Ms. Zhang was admit­ted to the Chi­nese Music Depart­ment of the Cen­tral Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music in Bei­jing, where she con­tin­ued study­ing pipa per­for­mance with Pro­fes­sors and Pipa Mas­ters Weixi Sun, Shicheng Lin, Yuzhong Kuang, and Zemin Chen. Four years lat­er, Ms. Zhang com­plet­ed her aca­d­e­m­ic and music course­work at the Cen­tral Con­ser­va­to­ry and, due to her out­stand­ing accom­plish­ments, was award­ed a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Music Per­for­mance (B.A.) with a major in Pipa and a minor in Piano, Guzheng, and Ruan.

In 2005, after an addi­tion­al three years of study com­bin­ing per­for­mance, com­po­si­tion, and eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy, along with the com­ple­tion of her the­sis, “The Vari­a­tions of the Shape and Struc­ture of Twist­ed Neck Pipa and Its Play­ing Skills” (pub­lished in The New Voice of Yue-Fu, The Aca­d­e­m­ic Peri­od­i­cal of Shenyang Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music), Ms. Zhang was award­ed a Mas­ter of Arts in Musi­col­o­gy (M.A.) from Xia­men Uni­ver­si­ty, China.

Upon grad­u­a­tion from the Cen­tral Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music, Ms. Zhang was offered a tenured posi­tion at the Xia­men Opera House as a Pipa Soloist. Over the next decade, Ms. Zhang gave many solo per­for­mances in Xia­men with the Opera House Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and the Xia­men Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra. She was also hon­ored to rep­re­sent the Opera House as a solo per­former on nation­al and inter­na­tion­al tours, play­ing in over a thou­sand com­bined per­for­mances in Chi­na, Japan, Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia, Thai­land, and the Philip­pines. While still in Xia­men, Ms. Zhang held a cel­e­brat­ed solo pipa recital in 2003 and a quin­tet ensem­ble con­cert in 2005.

With a nat­ur­al and ele­gant per­for­mance style devel­oped from an ear­ly age, Ms. Zhang has won many cita­tions and awards, includ­ing the “Out­stand­ing Solo Per­for­mance Award” in the Young Pro­fes­sion­al Pipa Per­former cat­e­go­ry at the 1st Inter­na­tion­al Chi­nese Tra­di­tion­al Instru­ments Com­pe­ti­tion in Bei­jing (1989), and 2nd Place in the Chi­nese String Ensem­ble Com­pe­ti­tion at the Fujian Art Fes­ti­val in 2001.

While pre­serv­ing tra­di­tion­al pipa reper­toires, Ms. Zhang has par­tic­i­pat­ed in many land­mark pre­mieres of works by mod­ern com­posers such as Tan Dun, Guo Wen­jing, and Li Binyang. She has also pre­miered sev­er­al notable works, includ­ing: — **Cham­ber Opera**: *Court­side*, writ­ten by Bay Area com­pos­er Jack Per­la and pro­duced by the Hous­ton Grand Opera (Pre­miere, Feb­ru­ary 2011, Hous­ton). — **Jazz Com­po­si­tion**: *Shang­hai Sto­ry* by Fran­cis Wong (Pre­miere, Novem­ber 2010, with San Fran­cis­co trom­bon­ist Wayne Wal­lace, Melody of Chi­na, and Asian Improv aRts). — **Mul­ti-Media Cham­ber Music**: *Shang­hai Tril­o­gy*, com­posed by Joan Huang with Bridge Cham­ber Vir­tu­osi (Pre­miere, June 2010, Expo 2010 Shang­hai; July 2010, Asian Arts Muse­um, San Fran­cis­co). — **Cham­ber Ensem­ble Com­po­si­tion**: *Pre­lude K2 Play*, com­posed by Jim Fran­cis­co (Pre­miere, Octo­ber 2009, Los Gatos). — **Cham­ber Com­po­si­tion for Chi­nese and West­ern Instru­ments**: *Won­der­ing Along the Jour­ney*, com­posed by Yuan­lin Chen (Pre­miere, Octo­ber 2007, San Jose, Moun­tain View, San Fran­cis­co, and Berke­ley; Jan­u­ary 2008, 30th Anniver­sary Nation­al Con­fer­ence, Cham­ber Music Amer­i­ca, New York). — **Con­tem­po­rary Bal­let**: *Long Riv­er High Sky*, com­posed by Miguel Fras­coni, with Melody of Chi­na, pre­sent­ed by the Lines Bal­let Com­pa­ny and chore­o­graphed by Alon­zo King (Pre­miere, April 2007, San Francisco)

Ms. Zhang suc­cess­ful­ly held her solo recital as the open­ing pro­gram of Music@Noon (2016) and a pipa and cel­lo duet con­cert (2017) at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty. She has been hon­ored to record the pipa sound sam­ples for Apple’s Garage­Band app (released in 2016). She has also per­formed with the LA Cham­ber Orches­tra (2015) and par­tic­i­pat­ed in three sea­sons of the San Fran­cis­co Symphony’s Adven­ture in Music (AIM) Edu­ca­tion­al Pro­gram (2014, 2011, 2008), the Sym­pho­ny San Jose ArtSPARK pro­gram (2011), and the Dis­ney­land Lunar New Year Cel­e­bra­tions (2020, 2019).

Her solo album, SERENITY, fea­tures a col­lec­tion of tra­di­tion­al pipa mas­ter­pieces and was released on Jan­u­ary 16, 2019. It is cur­rent­ly avail­able on var­i­ous stream­ing plat­forms, includ­ing Band­camp, Apple Music, Spo­ti­fy, and the iTunes Store.

Shen­shen was also select­ed for the Bay Area Pilot pro­gram by the Amer­i­can Com­posers Forum in 2021, and her duet album, SHENS­duo, was released in Feb­ru­ary 2024 under Inno­va Record­ings and received two Sil­ver Medals from the Glob­al Music Awards—one in the World Music cat­e­go­ry and the oth­er in the Duo cat­e­go­ry. This album show­cas­es eight orig­i­nal pipa duet works com­posed and per­formed by Shen­shen Zhang and Sophia Shen, fea­tur­ing a cap­ti­vat­ing world music fusion. It is cur­rent­ly avail­able on var­i­ous stream­ing plat­forms, includ­ing Band­camp, Apple Music, Spo­ti­fy, and the iTunes Store.

Since 2022, Ms. Zhang has been an adjunct instruc­tor in the Music Depart­ment at San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty. She also has her own pipa stu­dio in Sil­i­con Val­ley, where she teach­es clas­si­cal Chi­nese music to a diverse stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. From 2015 to 2017, Ms. Zhang taught at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty as a music instruc­tor and conductor.

In recent years, Shen­shen has been explor­ing new musi­cal con­ver­sa­tions through her ongo­ing live impro­vi­sa­tions and col­lab­o­ra­tions with the pio­neer­ing world music ensem­ble Ancient Future. A cou­ple of her impro­vi­sa­tions are set to be released in 2025 with Ancient Future.

(Lat­est edit ver­sion, June, 2022)

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