20-year-old British-Chinese classical pianist, composer, entrepreneur and software developer Shutian Cheng was born in Beijing and raised in London. He attended Westminster School as a music scholar while studying piano with Prof. Christopher Elton and is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in piano performance at the Royal Academy of Music under the guidance of Prof. Rustem Hayroudinoff. He recalls being brought to concerts and musicals when he was young to have sparked his interest in pursuing music at age 10, after which he studied piano with Prof. Danwen Wei and Prof. Jin Zhang of the Central Conservatory of Music. He also receives routine guidance from Stephen Kovacevich, Robert McDonald, Stephen Hough and Bernd Goetzke.

Cheng was awarded 1st Prize at the International Windsor Piano Competition in 2022 and was invited to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at Sinfonia Smith Square (formerly St. John’s Smith Square) in collaboration with conductor Guy Hopkins from Westminster School. He has since performed regularly in the UK and Europe, including the National Liberal Club, Duke’s Hall, the Whiteley, 60 Curzon, Auditorium Gilles de La Rocque, Notari Hall and Chiesa di San Giovanni.

Passionate about popularising classical music, Cheng has amassed an online following of 33 thousand subscribers (as of March 2025) and 6 million views by creating classical piano content on YouTube. His videos have been played for over 200 thousand hours and earned fans in 144 countries.

Cheng founded Sonautic Ltd in Feb 2025. Its flagship product, Sonautic, which Cheng designed and developed with his partners at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, is an app that can automatically plan and assess musicians’ practice using audio analysis and AI machine learning technologies.