the Chen-Shin Family Ensemble

About Us

Welcome to our journey as The Chen-Shin Family Ensemble. We are proud to share the story of our annual performances to raise scholarship funds to increase access to music education for all at Kaufman Music Center in New York City.

Analise Chen, violin
Xavier Chen, cello
Roger Chen, violin, mandolin
Eileen Shin, piano

For most of their musical lives, Analise and Xavier have studied their string instruments at Lucy Moses School, which resides within Kaufman Music Center and is Manhattan’s largest community performing arts school.

Kaufman’s “play-a-thon” originated almost a decade ago as a way for Kaufman students to showcase their polished performances while raising money for the center’s scholarship programs. Eileen had always enjoyed, and still enjoys, accompanying Analise’s and Xavier’s solo performances at Kaufman Music Center and elsewhere. However, the play-a-thon has presented a unique opportunity to bring the entire family together to practice and perform as a quartet and has inspired a set of experiences that has enriched our family life in immeasurable ways.

Every year, the annual play-a-thon has become a larger scale event, having eventually moved its all-day festivities, now called the Day of Musical Action, to beautiful Merkin Concert Hall. And every year, our family has become more ambitious in our efforts. As the kids’ musicianship and technique have grown, we have tackled more challenging repertoire that requires us to lay the groundwork months in advance. Each year, we enlist the help of our college friend and talented composer Scott Starrett to arrange pieces for our particular instrumentation. In our fundraising efforts – entirely crowdsourced through family and friends making personal contributions – we have set higher goals each year, which we have exceeded each time.

Since 2018, our family quartet performances have raised a cumulative total of $47,981.