Our History

Our journey as the Chen-Shin Family Ensemble began at the Lucy Moses School Play-a-thon on January 28, 2018, performing Pachelbel Canon in D as a family quartet. Analise was age 10 and Xavier was age 7.

The Pachelbel Canon in D is one of the most recognizable “greatest hits” of classical music, often played as part of wedding ceremonies. However, we took our inspiration from the final ensemble performance at Elisabeth Morrow School’s annual Summer String Festival in Englewood, New Jersey, which Analise and Xavier participated in for several summers. In that concert, 150 string players, ages 4 through grade 8 from all over the country and beyond, give a rousing performance of the Canon that moves you no matter how many times you’ve heard the piece.

If our young kids could play it there, why not try playing it as a family? We secured the arranged parts from the director of EMS’s program. Eileen had already been accompanying the kids’ solo performances, so all we needed to do was add Roger who had played the violin through high school. Ambitiously, Roger dusted off his violin to perform after a 29-year hiatus!

We raised $1,100.

For our second year performing at the Play-a-thon, we enlisted our college friend and composer Scott Starrett to arrange John William’s iconic Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme) from Star Wars just for us.

Eileen embraced the occasion by performing in full Princess Leia garb. While the kids resisted the idea of donning Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker costumes while performing (“I can’t play wearing a mask!”), they fully embraced what would become the defining ethos of our family performance efforts – practice hard, but have fun!

This year established our standing as the top fundraiser at the annual event, a title we continued to hold for multiple years.

We raised $2,458.

For our third Play-a-thon, we performed Scott Starrett’s crisp arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango.

We have long enjoyed Piazzolla’s works, especially after a trip to Argentina that Roger and Eileen had taken before Analise and Xavier were born. Libertango is probably one of Piazzolla’s most famous works, exemplifying his “nuevo tango” style that incorporates elements of jazz and classical music. The piece is also a crowd-pleaser, with its percussive rhythm, upbeat tempo and repeating themes moving inexorably to a climactic finish. Our performances of this piece seemed like a significant step up for us in effort, and we came out of our Play-a-thon performance feeling that we were doing something special for ourselves and the center. Little did we know at the time that the COVID-19 lockdowns would start a month later.

We raised $3,192.

While the COVID-19 lockdown was a time of tragedy, fear, loneliness and uncertainty, it was also a time when creativity in finding ways to connect flourished, locally and globally. We found inspiration in the many videos posted online and through social media of music and dance performances in people’s homes or ensemble performances created through individual recordings of parts merged. One such recording that went viral was of two very young and talented boys, Mirko and Valerio, playing a cover of Coldplay’s jubilant Viva la Vida and dancing with their violins while in lockdown at their home in Italy. Their joy is utterly infectious and provided the inspiration for our next performance.

With social distancing still in effect in 2021, the annual fundraising event transformed into Kaufman Music Center’s Week of Musical Action, filled with a mix of virtual interaction and inspired pre-recorded performances. We self-recorded Vida la Vida, skillfully arranged for us again by Scott Starrett. Listening to this performance evokes memories of our special and privileged time of family bonding in a time of sadness and uncertainty. Our friends were also inspired to give more, and we nearly doubled our giving impact as compared to the prior year.

We raised $6,139.

COVID-era inspirations continued to accrue in 2022. We had been inspired back in the summer of 2021 by seeing a fantastic live performance of the multi-string quartet Invoke. They performed a bluegrass rendition of Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King for their encore. Roger met the band who graciously agreed to share their arrangement with us. With Roger swapping his violin for a mandolin, we performed our version arranged by Karl Mitze of Invoke and by Scott Starrett for our instrumentation.

Kaufman’s fundraising event – now its Day of Musical Action – raised its bar by holding performances in beautiful Merkin Concert Hall. We also raised our bar, with Analise and Xavier growing in their technical abilities, our family improving our ensemble playing, and all of us raising even more money than the year before. Faster, higher … !

We raised $7,091.

After the past several years of family performances, we were really feeling the pressure of where to take things next. This time, we turned for inspiration to the Kanneh-Mason family performances of Vittorio Monti’s Czardas on YouTube. Maybe we’d do without the dizzyingly virtuosic improvisatory flourishes of Sheku, but we could emulate their shmaltz and fun with this eminently crowd-pleasing piece. So in addition to raising the bar on our fundraising goals each year, we reached new musical heights with our performance of Vittorio Monti’s Czardas arranged by Scott Starrett. After many weekends and late weeknights of family practicing, the family stepped off of Merkin Concert Hall’s stage on a collective high. 

The family amplified our Kaufman Day of Musical Action impact with additional performances. Xavier performed cello Scherzo No. 12 by Daniel van Goens, with Eileen accompanying him. Eileen also performed an 8-hands, 2-piano arrangement of Stars and Stripes Forever with Dovie Lepore-Currin, a former Special Music School student who is now studying piano at Juilliard Music School, Cathy O’Rourke, a fellow Kaufman Music Center trustee, and Igal Kesselman, the artistic director at Kaufman Music Center. What a day for our family!

We raised $8,308.

In the prior year Roger had joined the New York Mandolin Orchestra playing the mandobass, and Carlos Gardel’s Por Una Cabeza was part of their repertoire. The piece is a crowd pleaser used in several movies, most memorably in Scent of a Woman, and Scott Starrett obliged us once again by providing our arrangement. 

We tried enlisting friends to dance a sultry tango alongside our quartet to embellish the entertainment element of our performance, but we encountered reluctance – in part because friends perceived dancing to detract from the focal point of our performances. Although this piece is less virtuosic than others we have performed, it presented us with new musical challenges in phrasing and ensemble. If you were to listen to our early readings together of our parts, you would have agreed that this may have been our most demanding repertoire yet. In the end, we felt that the performance showcased our most mature musicianship thus far.

We raised $9,243.

The Carmen Fantasy by Pablo de Sarasate is a fantasy on famous and tuneful themes from Bizet’s opera Carmen for violin and piano or orchestra. Pablo de Sarasate was a Spanish virtuosic violinist, composer and conductor. Many of his compositions were show pieces designed to please the audience and show off the performer’s technique, and the Carmen Fantasy is no exception. We drew additional inspiration from the YouTube videos of LAYERS, a classical crossover piano trio group. So we once again turned to Scott Starrett for help, and credit for our arrangement goes to Bizet/Sarasate/Starrett.

This piece has indeed been our most ambitious effort yet. Much of the virtuosic technique demanded by the piece had not yet been present in the solo repertoire that Xavier has studied. Certain passages at tempo with proper intonation demanded dedicated and sustained practice by all of us, but especially Analise and Xavier. We were proud to bring it to life and cross the 5-figure threshold in fundraising dollars.

We raised $10,450.

For our 9th annual and final performance together as a family quartet, we performed selections from Vivaldi’s Summer Concerto in G Minor. It had been a harsh winter in New York with several blizzards so we did our part to heat things up by ushering in the spring and summer months.

We raised $12,038 from individual donors and an additional $21,000 from New York law firms.