Artist Bio

Hsin-Yun Huang has forged a career as one of the leading violists of her generation, performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Ms. Huang has appeared as soloist with prominent ensembles worldwide including the Berlin Radio Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Bogotá Philharmonic, NCPA Orchestra in Beijing, Zagreb Soloists, International Contemporary Ensemble, London Sinfonia, and Brazil Youth Orchestra. She appears regularly at festivals including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Rome, Spoleto USA, Moritzburg, Music@Menlo, and the Seoul Spring Festival. She tours extensively with the Brentano String Quartet, most notably including performances of the complete Mozart string quintets at Carnegie Hall. A passionate proponent of music education, she began a hybrid educational space called VivaViola! with the mission to expand the viola repertoire while preserving musical values and history through dialogues with esteemed musicians of today.

In the 2023-24 season, Ms. Huang performs at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where she is a regular guest, including opening night; Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; Moss Art Center, featuring the world premiere of James MacMillan’s Viola Quintet with the Brentano String Quartet (Blacksburg, VA); Brown University, featuring the world premiere of Eric Nathan's Double Concerto No. 2 for Two Violas, with co-soloist Misha Amory and the New York Classical Players (Providence, RI); Asia Society, featuring the workshop premiere of sisila ila ila: saying goodbye, a musical about the environment, featuring shadow puppetry and whale songs, and presented in partnership with the National Theater and Concert Hall of Taiwan (Houston); and Amsterdam Biennale at Muziekgebouw, with Brentano String Quartet. She also tours with John Malkovich, Aleksey Igudesman, Hyung-ki Joo, and other great musicians with a program entitled “The Music Critic.”

Last season, Ms. Huang co-commissioned Lei Liang, a Grawemeyer Award winner, to curate “Strings of Soul,” a program for viola and pipa, featuring virtuoso Wu Man. The program is inspired by authentic folk elements from around the world. The previous year included multidisciplinary collaborations with choreography by Ashkenazy Ballet, based on Ms. Huang’s solo viola project FantaC.

Past highlights also include concerto performances conducted by David Robertson, Osmo Vänskä, Xian Zhang, and Max Valdés in Beijing, Taipei, and Bogotá, and appearances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Ms. Huang has performed the complete Paul Hindemith viola concertos with the Taipei City Symphony and was the first solo violist to be featured at the National Performance Center of the Arts in Beijing. She has also performed at New York’s 92nd Street Y and the Seoul Spring Festival.

In recent years Ms. Huang embarked on a series of major commissioning projects for solo viola and chamber ensemble. To date, the project includes compositions by Shih-Hui Chen (Shu Shon Key, which Ms. Chen also arranged for orchestra) and Steven Mackey (Groundswell), which premiered at the Aspen Festival. Ms. Huang’s 2012 album Viola Viola, on Bridge Records, includes the two pieces, along with music by Elliott Carter, Poul Ruders, and George Benjamin. The album won accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Her most recent releases are FantaC (2020), a collection of solo viola pieces all based on the C string, and Viola Lens (2019), which features the complete unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of J.S. Bach, in partnership with violist Misha Amory.

A native of Taiwan and an alumna of Young Concert Artists, Ms. Huang received degrees from The Juilliard School and The Curtis Institute of Music. She has given master classes at the Guildhall School in London, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, the San Francisco Conservatory, Yong Sie Tow Conservatory in Singapore, and the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University. She served on the jury of the 2011 Banff International String Quartet Competition, the 2022 Tokyo International Viola Competition and the 2023 Melbourne Chamber Music Competition.

Ms. Huang first came to international attention as the gold medalist and the youngest competitor in the 1988 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition; in 1993 she was the top-prize winner in the ARD International Competition in Munich, and was awarded the highly prestigious Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award. She was a member of the Borromeo String Quartet from 1994 to 2000.

Ms. Huang is currently on the viola faculty at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music; she is grateful for her teachers — David Takeno, Peter Norris, Michael Tree, and Samuel Rhodes. She is married to Misha Amory, violist of the Brentano String Quartet. They live in New York City and have two children, Lucas and Leah. She plays on a 1735 Testore Viola.

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