Born in Zhangzhou, a small city in southeast China, Sophia Shen is a composer, sound artist, pipa performer and improviser currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her music often bridges the divide between cultures and breaks the boundaries between subjects. She incorporates pipa in many of her compositions, improvisations and performances, acoustically and electronically, as an artistic expression to facilitate cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogues. Her original composition works have been performed at major music festivals such as San Francisco Tape Music Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, SF Performances PIVOT Festival, EcoSono Environmental Music and Sound Art Festival, SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States), Other Minds Festival and Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival. As a composer, she has been commissioned by many distinguished ensembles and organizations including the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Wild Projects Production, William Winant Percussion Group, Thingamajigs and Gamelan Encinal. Sophia holds an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College where she also studied composition and improvisation. She received a BA degree in Music with High Distinction and a BA degree in German from the University of Virginia.