Hailed as a prodigious talent, Hsueh-Yung Shen received his early musical training in composition at the age of eight. Born in Washington, D.C., Shen received most of his musical training with Nadia Boulanger in France, and also studied with Darius Milhaud in Aspen, Colorado. He studied composition with Leon Kirchner and Lucas Foss at Harvard University, and earned his doctorate in composition from Stanford University. Shen has held teaching posts at both Harvard and Stanford, and at Southwestern University near Austin, Texas, where he also serves as timpanist with the Austin Lyric Opera.

His works have been premiered by conductor James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra in New York, the Concord String Quartet, at Wigmore Hall in London by the Menuhin School, Summartonar Festival in the Faeroe Islands, the Corona Guitar Quartet from Copenhagen, Denmark, with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra in Vilnius.