We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yan Shen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yan below.

Yan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

1. As every classical trained pianist, I started learning playing piano when I was 5 years old. After taking 12 years private lessons, I went to the conservatory to pursue professional studying and career. I finished my undergraduate and master’s degree of piano performance, and luckily I received a job offer as a piano/chamber instructor in the Xinghai Conservatory in Guangzhou, China. After 5 years of working there, I felt that it was the time that I need to learn more and to go out to see the world. So I decided to quit my job and came to USA to pursue my Doctoral degree. Within 7 years, I finished my Doctoral program as well as an Artist Diploma in Piano Performance at Moores School of Music, UH. And now, here I am, I found my place as a concert pianist, a piano instructor in the States.

2. To speed up my learning process, I would say I wish I could have practiced more when I was in the conservatory and when I was a teenager. I also could go to more live concerts and listen to other musicians playing . I believe that is the wish from many musicians.

3. When I was in school, actually, not until the most recent years, I thought the technique was the most essential element of playing piano. Especially, seeing all the world class pianists on the stage and playing flawlessly nowadays , it seems like the perfection of technique will make one become the winner of competitions and the first class musician. This trend starts making musicians pursue mechanism perfection over the freedom of emotional expression inside of the music.

But when I started playing concerts more and more on the stage, doing concert tours in China and other countries, I realize that what touches the audience the most is the essence of the music, which is the emotion you bring to them as a performer, the color of the sound that you make on the instrument , the energy that they absorbed from your music. Actually, the audience only know if this music is pretty and touching or not, not if it’s perfectly accomplished technically. In Chinese language, “Art” , which includes the performing art and fine art, constructed by two characters, Art and Skill. In my understanding, art goes the first, and after is the skill. Once you have accomplished certain level of skills, only the heart and the beauty of art can bring the joy and freedom into the musical form .In which the center of the heart and beauty of the nature of the art are the ultimate goal of our human life.

4. The obstacles that stood in I think it was the human ego. In the certain period of my life, I was quite criticizing about other musician’s performances. I also extremely critical about my own playing, I never felt satisfied about my performance, that makes me unhappy within myself. When I get more mature and older, I started to accept the and the variety of people , and stop criticizing, as well as accepting myself. During the period of this accepting process inside of me, I felt that the real freedom is coming, and I can enjoy my own performance more, and bring more joy and positive energy into my playing and touch the audience.

Yan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a concert pianist, a piano instructor, I play concerts (solo piano recitals, chamber music concerts, concerto with orchestras), giving master classes, teaching piano lessons in Houston, nationally and worldwide. My main goal is to spread the good energy of the music all over the world through my performances and teaching/speaking.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I hope the society could support more individual artists/musicians like us financially and, instead of only looking into the ones that are from the big organizations/competitions. In that way, more and more creative environment will be built up rather than the courage of eager for the fame.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect for me as a musician is when I hear back from the audience about my performance that how much they have been touched by my performance. As a teacher, when my students tell me that how lucky and happy they are for being my students, that is the moment I feel the most satisfaction.

Contact Info:

• Website: yanshen-piano.com
• Instagram: yanshen_piano
• Facebook: Yan Shen
• Linkedin: Yan Shen
• Youtube: Yan Shen-Pianist