Anna da Silva Chen is widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading concert violinists, known for her passion and virtuosity as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, recitalist and director. She coleads the Alma Moodie Quartet and is currently on probation for a tenured position in the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

As a soloist, Anna has performed with many of Australia’s major orchestras including the Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland, Tasmanian and Canberra Symphony Orchestras as well as several regional, youth and community orchestras. Concerto highlights include Elgar with the ASO, Shostakovich No. 1 with Ensemble Apex and West Phil, Beethoven with SCS, Brahms with NSSO, the Butterfly Lovers’ with QSO, and Sibelius and Tchaikovsky concerti with several orchestras. In 2024, she performed the Australian premiere of Max Reger’s 1908 Violin Concerto with Concerto Arcana. Overseas, she made her German debut in 2020 with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, toured Spain as a soloist with the SCM Wind Symphony Orchestra, performed several concerts and tutored chamber ensembles in the Netherlands’ 2022 Orlando Festival, and lead a performance of Ligeti’s Melodien in Italy’s Chigiana International Festival 2024.

By the age of 15, Anna was winner of 1st and Audience Choice prizes in Australia’s Kendall National Violin Competition, the National Youth Concerto Competition, Fine Music FM’s Young Virtuoso Award, and semi-finalist in the Menuhin International Violin Competition. She went on to win the overall prize of KPO’s NSW Concerto Competition, the Sydney Conservatorium’s Concerto Competition, several University of Sydney Academic Merit Prizes, the Corrina Taylor Memorial Prize and the Miss Ada Thompson Scholarship, and was a frequent finalist in the ABC Young Performers Awards. In recent years she was a laureate of the Vienna and Gisborne International Music Competitions and one of 22 violinists selected to compete in the prestigious Carl Nielsen International Competition.

Deeply motivated as a chamber musician and curator, Anna embraces complex and neglected works across many historical periods. As founding member of the Alma Moodie Quartet, she shares the dedication to the music their namesake championed — the classics as well as rarely played quartets by Schoenberg, Reger, Ligeti and Zemlinsky. She has performed as guest violinist with the Australia Ensemble, Omega Ensemble, Australia Piano Quartet, Ensemble Q, and Selby & Friends, as soloist, guest director, and concertmaster of Ensemble Apex, and as a festival artist in the Canberra International, Tasmanian Chamber, Brycefield Estate, and Newcastle Music Festivals. She has been privileged to perform chamber music with Richard Tognetti, Kristian Winther, Andrew Haveron, Julian Smiles, Shuann Cai, Daniel de Borah and Lee Dionne

Anna was born in Sydney and raised in Wollongong, beginning violin lessons at the age of 8 with Sarah Hindson. Anna maintains a strong connection to audiences on the South Coast and has continued to perform concerts at the Gerringong Music Club series almost every year since she was 11. For several years she studied with Dr Robin Wilson in the Sydney Conservatorium’s Rising Stars program, as an undergraduate with Alice Waten, and finally with Prof Mihaela Martin in Cologne, Germany. She has had memorable lessons with Eberhard Feltz (Conservatorio di Verona), Ilya Gringolts (Accademia Musicale Chigiana), Johannes Meissl, Maxim Vengerov, Barnabás Kelemen, and Boris Kuschnir (Kronberg Academy).