Cellist Sophie Shao, winner of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and top prizes at the Rostropovich and Tchaikovsky competitions, is a versatile and passionate artist whose performances the New York Times has described as “eloquent, powerful,” the Los Angeles Times as “impressive,” and the Washington Post as “deeply satisfying.”

Shao has premiered Howard Shore’s Mythic Gardens, Richard Wilson’s The Cello Has Many Secrets, and Shih-Hui Chen’s multimedia concerto Our Son Is Not Coming Home to Dinner. She has appeared as a soloist throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Her dedication to chamber music led to the creation of her popular Sophie Shao and Friends series, and she performs regularly at festivals across the country, including Chamber Music Northwest, Bravo! Vail, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Festival Mozaic. She has also participated in the Marlboro Music Festival, the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, and was a member of Chamber Music Society Two, the young artist residency program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2025, she served as Artist-in-Residence at Festival Mozaic.

Ms. Shao’s recordings include the Complete Bach Suites; André Previn’s Reflections for Cello, English Horn, and Orchestra (EMI Classics); Richard Wilson’s Diablerie and Brash Attacks; Barbara White’s My Barn Having Burned to the Ground, I Can Now See the Moon (Albany Records); Howard Shore’s original score for the film The Betrayal (Howe Records); the Marlboro Music Festival’s 50th Anniversary recording (Bridge Records); Herschel Garfein’s The Layers (Acis Records); and Howard Shore’s Mythic Gardens (Sony Classical). Her newest solo album, CanCan Macabre, was released on Centaur Records.

A native of Houston, Texas, Ms. Shao began playing the cello at age six, studying with Shirley Trepel, principal cellist of the Houston Symphony. At age thirteen, she enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied cello with David Soyer and chamber music with Felix Galimir. After graduating from Curtis, she continued her studies with Aldo Parisot at Yale University, earning a B.A. in Religious Studies from Yale College and an M.M. from the Yale School of Music.

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