Luosha Fang - Violin
Violinist and violist Luosha Fang is an artist of unusual imagination who brings an adventurous spirit to music ranging from canonical repertoire to world premieres. She has soloed with the Albany Symphony, American Symphony Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, West Virginia Symphony, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and was a winner of Astral’s 2013 National Auditions and S&R Foundation’s 2015 Washington Award.
Fang’s 2016–17 season includes Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Bay-Atlantic Symphony, as well as performances -- as both solo violinist and solo violist -- of the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, with the Suzhou Royal Chamber Orchestra in China (violin) and in the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, Spain, under Pablo Gonzalez (viola). She has recently performed the complete Ligeti Viola Sonata at Bard Music West in San Francisco, and will appear in Navah Perlman’s Lake Placid Pro-Musica Chamber Music Series, Kimberton Chamber Music Festival and Viviane Hagner's Krzyżowa-Music in August 2017. Later, she will participate in the Music from Marlboro Chamber Music Festival tour (2019).
Ms. Fang has a strong interest in championing contemporary works. She performed George Tsontakis' double concerto Unforgettable with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, with whom she also recorded the work for release on NAXOS Records. She worked closely with composer Krzysztof Penderecki in preparation for a March 2014 Carnegie Hall performance of his Sextet. She also premiered Chinese composer Shen Yiwen’s violin concerto "Mulan" with the American Symphony Orchestra Recently, she appeared in recitals at Bard College and in Philadelphia, premiering a newly-commissioned solo violin work by Michael Djupstrom, “Lautar.” She also presented a concert of solo violin works by Jeffrey Mumford at Spectrum NYC.
A winner of the 2015 S&R Foundation Washington Award, Ms. Fang also was awarded the Silver Medal at the prestigious 2010 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition as the first violinist of the Chimeng Quartet, of which she was a founding member. As a chamber musician, she has appeared in leading concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center and the Library of Congress. Her festival appearances include Marlboro, Ravinia, Norfolk, Aspen, Kneisel Hall, Music from Angel Fire, Incontri in Terra di Siena, and Bard, and she has worked with such musicians as Mitsuko Uchida, Nobuko Imai, Bruno Canino, Cynthia Raim, Benita Valente, Marina Piccinini, Peter Wiley, Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom, Paul Katz, Hsin-Yun Huang, Roberto Diaz, Anna Polonsky, eighth blackbird, and members of the Guarneri and Juilliard string quartets between 2010-2016. In addition, she was a guest artist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Fang made her concert debut at the age of eight in China with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3, and at sixteen moved from China to the US on a scholarship to the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Ida Kavafian and Arnold Steinhardt. After graduating from Bard with degrees in both violin and Russian studies, she attended the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Ida Kavafian and Shmuel Ashkenasi. She also studied with Anatoly Reznikovsky at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and in 2016 began viola studies with Nobuko Imai and violin with Marco Rizzi at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid. Always in pursuit of new artistic frontiers, she collaborated with the Almanac Dance Circus Theatre and the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and studied acting and theater at Bard College and the University of Pennsylvania.