German-Turkish violinist Ayla Şahin has been hailed for her ‘purity of sound and maturity of musicianship’. Since her 2019 Wigmore Hall debut, she has been establishing a varied and exciting career across Europe and beyond as a soloist, chamber musician and artistic director.

A recipient of many awards she is winner of the prestigious Countess of Munster Trust Award, the Royal Academy of Music Concerto Competition, Vontobel Bank’s Stiftung Lyra Award and the Brambilla Prize of the Musik-Akademie Basel for the most outstanding final recital. As a member of Trio Archai she is the 1st prize winner of the 72nd Royal Overseas League Competition, laureate of the 2023 Orpheus Swiss Chamber Music Competition, winner of Tunnell Trust’s Awards Scheme for the 2025/2026 season.

Invited to perform at Europe’s finest concert halls, she has performed at venues including King Place, Royal Albert Hall, KKL Luzerne, Stadtcasino Basel and St. George’s Bristol. A passionate and sought after chamber musician, she is invited to festivals such as Yellow Barn, Swiss Chamber Music, NUME, Schiermonikoog, Aurora Chamber Music, Victoria International Arts, Schaffhausen Klassik and Swaledale. With the Cassadó Ensemble (Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Friends), she performed all across the UK and recorded for Decca Classics - Bloch’s Prelude for string quartet (2019) and Carnival of the Animals (2021). The latter was performed at the BBC Proms 2021 and broadcast on BBC Four and BBC Radio 3. She has collaborated with eminent artists such as Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Bruno Delepelaire, Alena Baeva, Tom Poster and Mark Simpson.

Together with violist Alinka Rowe, Ayla founded VOLTA Kammermusikfest, a yearly international chamber music festival in the heart of Basel, Switzerland. As artistic director, she aims to bridge the gap between artist and audience through combining innovative programming and a contemporary performance space, with world class musicians. Ayla’s musicianship has been greatly influenced from working with renowned artists an pedagogues such as Leonidas Kavakos, Miriam Fried, Donald Weilerstein, Ilya Gringolts, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Andràs Keller and Robert Levin at prestigious masterclasses such as IMS Prussia Cove and Accademia Chigiana. Since 2022 she has been studying in the class of Rainer Schmidt, first at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg and then at the MusikAkademie Basel, where she was awarded the Brambilla Prize for the most outstanding masters recital. She continues her postgraduate studies at the Musik Akademie Basel with Rainer Schmidt and pianist Zoltán Fejérvári.

Born in Brighton, UK, Ayla began studying violin and piano at the age of six. She made her concerto debut in 2012 with the Brighton Youth Orchestra and has since then performed in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Switzerland, Taiwan, the USA and UK. At fourteen, she was admitted as a full scholarship junior student to the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she later graduated with high distinction in 2021, studying under Jack Liebeck.

She is grateful for the support of the DOMS Stiftung, Stiftung Melinda Esterhazy de Galantha, Rita Zimmerman Stiftung and the Musik-Akademie Basel. Ayla performs on a J.B. Vuillaume violin on generous loan from Florian Leonhard Fine Violins.