Since Medieval times, the name of St. Valentine, a Christian martyr from the 3rd century, has been associated with the love-themed feast of February 14 – a day when lovers express their affection through flowers, sweets, gifts, and cards. Valentine’s Day is likewise a holiday when the world embraces romantic music, a domain in which [...]

Recently I have been asked quite a lot about my opinion on what my thoughts are of the following article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=stradivarius-fails-sound-test-versu-12-01-04 Basically there was a test involving 6 violins – 3 of which were modern and the other 3 were famous old italian violins (2 Stradivarius and 1 Guarnerius del Gesu) Now I don’t know [...]

These are the most common questions I get asked (next time I’ll do one where you get to ask the questions!) Q:  How did you start learning the violin?  A:  When I was around 3 years old I had a toy guitar which I loved a lot. One day I decided to put the guitar [...]

Hey guys! Where have I been? Everywhere! But recently it’s been easier for me to upload photos and smaller posts to my facebook page here at: http://www.facebook.com/SmileFromYourHeart It’s also linked to my twitter account (but you won’t see the photos): http://twitter.com/raychenviolin “But what about all the blog posts??” Well it’s just that Facebook has made [...]

Hello all! “What’s the use of having a blog if you don’t use it?” was the recent question that was put to me…and by “recent” I mean quite some time ago. Still, it wasn’t until a few weeks after that moment of enlightenment from my friend that I finally dragged my lazy butt over to [...]

This was for the “Virtuoso” CD which came out earlier this year in February. Award presentation will be in Berlin on October 2nd. Kind of ruins my Oktoberfest plans but oh well. I’m pretty excited because I haven’t received a trophy since I was 12 years old! http://www.echoklassik.de/klassik-preistraeger/