Bin Chao was born into a family of musicians and began playing the violin at the age of six. He studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where he graduated with distinction, and he completed a Masters in Music at the Mannes College of Music in New York, where he studied with the violinist David Nadien.

Henry Roth, the violinist and music critic, praised Bin Chao’s musicality and sound technique in his book Great Violinists in Performance, a book that analyses the 100 greatest violinists of the twentieth century, from the author’s perspective.

In 1984 he came 2nd in the Second National Violin Competition of China. As a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, he has performed throughout Europe and North America. He moved to Lisbon in 1991, and he has participated in the major music festivals in Portugal, as well as the Aspen Festival and the Schumann Festival in New York.

In 2001, he was a guest soloist at the prestigious Annual English Handbell Festival in New York. Between 1999 and 2001, he taught violin in New York, part of the Midori Foundation’s initiative to bring music to public schools. He has taught at the University of Évora and, since 2007, has taught violin, viola and chamber music at the Piaget Institute. He has collaborated with the Conservatory of Music at the University of Lawrence in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA since 2010. Bin Chao plays a violin made by Carlo Giuseppe Testore in 1715.