Ray Chen Finds His Purpose and Makes an Impact

By Megan Westberg | From the September-October issue of Strings Magazine

I get the sense that violinist Ray Chen is still searching for the right answer—the perfect, succinct media-ready response—to a particular question. Funny thing is, it isn’t a question I’ve asked him. In fact, outside the introductory pleasantries, I haven’t asked him anything at all. He’s calling from the airport in Chicago as he waits for a connecting flight to Los Angeles (delayed) and has thus far wryly chuckled at my suggestion that he may be headed for a break after his recent stint as guest artist at Interlochen Arts Camp (not so much—but he did get a fleeting “pocket of time” to leap into a Michigan lake post-concert the night before). Before I launch into a litany of questions about his upcoming release, Player 1; his practice platform, Tonic; and the general comings and goings of the artist known as Ray Chen, he thinks it may be worth mentioning why it is he routinely ventures outside the box, as it were, in terms of the activities that typically occupy a concert violinist. So he poses the first question himself.

“The most common question I get asked,” he says in a smooth and pleasant tenor, “is ‘why are you doing all of this as a musician?’” 

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To be fair, I probably would have come around to asking him this question. He’s got a lot going on. In addition to being quite the social media phenom (his Instagram page has 947,000 followers at this particular moment), he produces educational videos for students and serves as an ambassador for Sony Electronics and music consultant for Riot Games (think League of Legends). He designed a violin case for GEWA. He partnered with ClassicalPixel and offers the resulting merch for sale on his website (Chen in pixel form on shirts, hoodies, and keychains). He founded an interactive practice platform (more on that later). Oh, and he also releases albums and continues to perform on concert stages around the globe. 

So perhaps it’s no wonder we’re chatting while he changes planes. 

Sounds like a dream, right? But it wasn’t always. Chen started playing via the Suzuki Method when he was four, sharing his music with a lot of other kids, sitting in a circle on the floor and playing for one another. He clearly remembers this time fondly. But if he was to become a soloist, he couldn’t remain in the warmth of that circle. 

“Fast forward a few years, and things got serious,” he says. “I moved to the States, got into Curtis (not on my first attempt, I might add), and things were very serious. I felt like a clock was always ticking.” He was on the professional track, which meant intense study—and competitions. 

During the summers, he chased the joy of his early playing experiences at academies and festivals like Encore and Aspen. “It was a respite from all the hyper-competitive zero-sum-game mentality. Competitions are very much that. They say it’s great; everyone is a winner”—he pauses for a quiet laugh—“but when you’re standing there, and you don’t hear your name get called, which happened to me way more often than when I did get called, it surely doesn’t feel like that.”

But then, of course, his name did get called. He won. And he won a couple of big ones: the Yehudi Menuhin in 2008 and, the competition he considers his breakthrough, the Queen Elizabeth in 2009. And, at first, he felt like he was leveling up, moving from goal to goal as he bounded to the top of his field. As it turned out, however, this was unsustainable. 

“After a while, you’re just exhausted, and that’s what happened to me,” he says. “Right before the pandemic, I was getting burned out. I was really tired. I was wondering: what is my purpose, and why am I doing this? And that was sort of the first time that I had reevaluated my goals as a musician. 

“When I was 12 years old, I just wanted to play music and travel all around the world and become a really famous violinist and play with this and that orchestra. And that’s, like, everyone’s dream. And then, after you get it, what do you do? You’re sort of mixed because what happens is, you feel bad. You feel bad because you ask yourself, am I ungrateful? Am I not appreciative of what I have? Other people would kill for this opportunity. Why am I feeling so empty?” 

He had struggled for the two years leading up to the pandemic, hoping his professional malaise would sort itself out. It didn’t. But he had already begun to move in unconventional directions in terms of content creation, participation in events like Play with Ray, support for platforms like Musical Heroes, and fundraising. And he had started getting the question from media types that he’s attempting to answer for me now: why he extended himself beyond the stage and recording studio. His answer then? “I just enjoy it!” 

“That was the best answer that I could come up with,” he says, sounding a touch rueful. Evidently, it wasn’t the right answer. Not the one he’s settled on since. Not the one he’s about to reveal. It was, he says, too open to interpretation. 

Covid forced him to slow down. Admittedly “a bit lost,” he went to Taiwan (where he was born in 1989, though he was raised in Australia) and spent the time off pursuing his interest in the tech world, immersing himself in the company of tech professionals and contemplating his purpose. And finally, it came to him. 

“It was like, oh my gosh! I realized what my purpose is, my why,” he says. “It’s to create positive impact through music.” He arrived at the thought as he looked hard at the things that truly motivated him: music community and music education. “Music is really just a vehicle for me. It’s something I happen to be good at, but really what drives me is the people. It’s getting to know them, getting to know what makes them tick.” 

This epiphany gave Chen the framework to evaluate his priorities. “You reorient yourself to understanding, oh, well, my purpose is actually not to be the greatest violinist or just to play with whatever XYZ orchestra. My goal is to measure myself and my success by the amount of positive impact I have on people through music.” 

So that’s the why (though, still seemingly unsatisfied with his answer, he returns to it later)—the guiding principle behind Chen’s concerts, social media involvement, collaborations, videos, recordings, and development of his practice platform, Tonic. 

Ah, Tonic. I did want to ask some questions about Tonic. As with Chen’s other activities, the “what” is fairly easy to access. Tonic is a free practice platform (for all instruments—not just strings) founded by Chen and tech entrepreneur Rose Xi, whom he met during his pandemic sojourn to Taiwan. It began as an app called Pocket Conservatory, launched in 2020, which then evolved into the rebranded, relaunched Tonic, which debuted in its current form in 2023. Within its first year, it gained over 100,000 users without its administrators having to spend a penny on marketing. (Chen posts about it on his social channels, but growth has been entirely organic.) 

So what is it? Motivation to practice in digital form. Users are able to set a practice schedule, track their practice time, earn badges, and “level up” their avatars (there are no videos) when they meet goals. They can also open up their practice rooms through a Live Studios feature, giving other users access to their sessions, effectively providing players with a live supportive audience that can provide feedback. Tonic musicians can join interest groups and chat with other users. There’s a blog covering everything from Tonic updates to musical development tips to instrument care advice. The platform also partners with professional musicians and industry insiders to host feedback sessions (some string-related partners include violinists Stefan Jackiw and Joel Link). It is, in essence, an app that employs a gaming vibe to create a community around a traditionally solitary pursuit. 

And so Chen and I go back to why. 

“Every single person who has to practice, who plays an instrument, knows the difficulties,” he explains. “It comes down to lack of motivation and loneliness.” He describes the music journey (for everyone, not just professionals) as having three phases: learning (teachers, schools, videos teaching students how to play), practicing, and performing (from concert stages to playing for friends at the beach). He and Xi thought about this. “The first and third pieces have already got a lot going on in them, but there was a realization that there’s nothing really going on in the second phase. I mean, you’re mostly practicing on your own. Your teacher says, ‘All right, I’ll see you next week,’ at the end of the lesson, and then you’re on your own. And that’s it.”

And unless you’re a professional or confidently striding in that direction, a student may not be performing more than once or twice a year, raising the stakes significantly. “If you mess up,” says Chen, “your whole year’s worth’s gone down the drain.” 

He thinks most people stop playing their instruments because eventually, they just stop practicing. Its priority diminishes as the isolation and effort required take their toll. “And we felt, well, what if we could change that by making it social and fun, into a game, so that you could see your path of progression more clearly?” Tonic is also meant to mitigate some of the stresses of performance by bringing an audience into the practice room. “It feels like the concert is really just an extension of your practice room, of your living room,” says Chen. “And vice versa. Your living room suddenly extends into a more meaningful place.”

The platform thus took its current form and is continuing to mature. Its first official event, TonicCon, will take place in October in Los Angeles, where it will partner with the Colburn School. “There will be evening concerts, there will be master class opportunities, there’ll be panel discussions. People can participate either as spectators or as performers. There’ll be tours of instrument-making workshops. And more will be announced,” says Chen. 

At least one of those announcements will be about Tonic’s development of a new, performance-based function. “You earn your way toward performing,” says Chen. “That’s something that we’ll be working on, and all under the context, of course, of giving people a purpose for their practice.”  

We’ve been chatting for a while now, and a little ping of anxiety is beginning to chime in the back of my head. Chen’s on a layover. Will he be summoned to his gate before we even touch on the album? Because there’s also an album, Player 1 (recorded for Decca with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Cristian Măcelaru conducting), set to be released in October. Erich Korngold’s lovely, dare I say cinematic Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, serves as its foundation, which is then adorned with themes from television, anime, and video game scores: Naruto, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Pokémon Red, Squid Game, The Promised Neverland, and How to Train Your Dragon. 

There is one original piece included, Serenade, by Chen’s friend, composer Eunike Tanzil. Its soaring strings and bittersweet c’est la vie quality evoke a remembered romance in shades of shimmering azure and bougainvillea pink. It is downright inescapably cinematic on purpose, written specifically, in fact, to Chen’s request that it represent the story progression of a short-form social media post. Music with a hook, a promise, with which one might choose to score one’s own life online. 

The Serenade’s aural imagery, however, is still not quite as inescapable as the question I’m now hoping Chen will address. Again. With a discography that reads a bit like Classical’s Greatest Hits (Mozart, Stravinsky, Tartini, Bach, Franck, Mendelssohn, Ravel, and Tchaikovsky all making appearances), why pair the Korngold (considered a classical composer despite his Hollywood turn) with themes from video games? Why call the album Player 1? 

“The Player 1 concept comes from the main character, and when I think about it, the main character, especially now with Gen Z, is a very relatable thing,” says Chen, who noticed the integration between gaming and lifestyle, especially among the members of Gens X, Y, Z, and beyond. Player 1 isn’t so much about reinvention as it is about recasting, providing what Chen might consider an entry point to the music. “When it comes to games—as well as anime, animation, all these different scores—there’s always this sense of main character, the hero. We talk about the hero in the concerto. But nowadays, you don’t really say that anymore—the protagonist. It’s Player 1!” The listening audience, thus, becomes Player 2. 

Korngold (1897–1957), who scored more than 20 films and quoted several of their themes in his violin concerto, seemed the perfect composer to anchor this album. “Korngold was the OG film score guy who brought his music from Europe, his tradition, and started this whole influential Hollywood sound that would later influence people like John Williams to… everybody, to other types of scoring: anime, television, film as well. So there was a lot of influence there, and this whole album revolves around that. So there’s the scoring aspect, and there’s the hero aspect represented through the games. There’s just a lot of integration,” explains Chen, “and I think that integration is the very essence of the album.” 

Also, it has to be said: Ray Chen genuinely loves anime. And video games. “I had to fight my parents for the right to play games!” he says (echoing the experience of perhaps every child born post 1966). All of this music drew him in because of his own experience with it. He played Pokémon Red as a kid and revels in the idea that its original 8-bit music (“like old Nokia ring tones”) has been given the symphonic treatment. “You imagine all the kids who’ve ‘grown up’ listening to that and thinking, oh my gosh. This is what that sounds like,” enthuses Chen. “That’s what I want to bring. That’s what classical music is to me. It’s the joy of discovery. The ‘wow’ at hearing a full-blown orchestra playing your favorite tracks. And that feeling people get.”

That’s part of his positive impact. So is his desire to lead the next generation forward. He knows young people are watching him, wondering what he’ll do next. “When you train to be a classical musician, is it classical music or nothing? Is that it? So many people feel like they’re not allowed. What are they allowed to do?

“This is me [exploring] what it means to be a musician today. You can try different things. It’s about quality, and as long as you have that, why not share your artistry with everyone—with different genres, with different industries, with different passions that you might have?” he says. Besides, he’s not so hung up on labels. 

“What is Korngold? Most people would say he’s classical music. I don’t know. Is he? Why is he classical music? What is classical music?” he muses. 

I feel like it’s probably time to let Chen have a minute before he finds himself airborne. So I tell him that certain younger members of my family were drawn instantly to the sound of his Zelda track, that it opened up an interesting new avenue of discussion about musical tastes. He’s most enthusiastic about this. “What I love to hear is that it’s connecting people. What I love the most is that connection between people,” he says.

And then, he returns to his initial question. “It feels like back when I was being asked, ‘Why are you doing all these other things?’ and my best answer was just, ‘I enjoy it.’ Maybe my answer now is that I just feel like it’s important. Which is equally fluffy. And equally unclear. Not a very well-crafted response. But that’s what artistry is. You have this incredible desire—you know it’s important; you feel it in your bones—and then other people respond to it. And that’s all you need.”

I don’t know. That sounds like a pretty good reason to me.