Violinist Stephanie Yu is a performer, composer, collaborator, and coach based in Los Angeles. She holds a Bachelor and Master of Music from the Juilliard School, as a recipient of C.V. Starr & Teplitsky Memorial scholarships. An avid orchestral and chamber musician, she has performed in various venues nationally and internationally, including the Royal Albert Hall (London), Berghain (Berlin), Kennedy Center (Washington D.C.), Metropolitan Opera House (New York), Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center (New York), Carnegie Hall (New York), and Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles).
Stephanie is a versatile artist whose work honors yet transcends tradition. As a studio musician, she continues to record with Oscar and Emmy-award winning composers for film, television, and video game soundtracks, and has performed in live bands & sessions for iconic artists including Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammed, Beyoncé, Chloe x Halle, Cypress Hill, Danny Elfman, Justin Timberlake, Jon Batiste, Jónsi, Kendrick Lamar, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, The Who, and more. A fun fact: her first paid gig was at age eight, playing on the score for Music of the Heart. Stephanie is also an experienced music consultant and coach for on-screen violin playing for film and tv productions.
As a member of the Recording Academy, she is ardently committed to new music discovery. Stephanie was a monthly resident for NTS Radio, a global radio platform with studios in London, Los Angeles and Shanghai. In 2025, marking her debut with the record label Curious Music, she is releasing a full length LP with her collaborator Collin Davis entitled “Altar of Tomorrow.”
In addition to her own projects, Stephanie is committed to a pursuit of the arts through teaching and community involvement. Through spoken word and music, she was a volunteer with Shining Light, a Performing Arts initiative that shares hope with the incarcerated. In 2012 and 2013, she and a team of Juilliard students gave concerts in temporary housing complexes in Japan’s Tohoku region, the community most affected by the tsunami. Stephanie has also travelled to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil to mentor students of Neojiba, a program based on the highly successful Venezuelan music program ‘El Sistema.’ At Juilliard, she was an Instrumental Music Program Fellow at P.S. 11 and P.S. 84 schools, English Teaching Fellow, Colloquium Peer Mentor, and Gluck Community Service Fellow.
Stephanie has been a fellow of the Perlman Music Program, London Masterclasses, Castleton Festival founded by Lorin Maazel, National Symphony Orchestra Music Institute, ENCORE School for Strings, and Aspen Music Festival. She has been under the tutelage of Masao Kawasaki, Joseph Lin, Catherine Cho, Bing Wang, and Alexander Treger. Awarded the Merv Griffin Memorial Scholarship at the age of 16, she was a guest soloist with the Young Musicians (YMF) Debut Orchestra at their annual Gala in the historic Beverly Hills Hilton; she was delighted to find herself on a program with actor and director Clint Eastwood. A true Los Angeles native, Stephanie attended the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences as an EMMI scholarship student and has received support from a myriad of institutions, including The Colburn Foundation, Leni Fe Bland Foundation, Howard P. Allen (Edison International) Scholarship Committee, and the Cerritos Performing Arts Center.
Stephanie also enjoys staying active in her community. She ran the New York City (2015) and Los Angeles Marathons (2018), and is a regular outreach worker for the unhoused.