Cho-Liang Lin, violin

Violinist Cho-Liang Lin is lauded the world over for the eloquence of his playing and for the superb musicianship that marks his performances. In a concert career spanning the globe for more than thirty years, he is equally at home with orchestra, in recital, playing chamber music, and in a teaching studio.

Mr. Lin’s concert engagements reflect his wide-ranging musical activities. Performing on several continents, he appears as soloist with orchestras of Detroit, Toronto, Dallas, Houston, Nashville, San Diego and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; in Europe with the Bergen Philharmonic, Stockholm Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, and the English Chamber Orchestra; and in Asia with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, Malaysia Philharmonic, and Bangkok Symphony.

In recent seasons, Mr. Lin has expanded his orchestral engagements to include performances as both soloist and conductor. He completed season-long residencies with the Shanghai Symphony and with the Singapore Symphony which included engagements as soloist and conductor, participating in chamber music, and giving master classes.  In 2012/13, Mr. Lin returns to play and conduct with the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan and the symphonies of Detroit, San Antonio, and Shanghai.

As an advocate for music of our time, Mr. Lin has enjoyed collaborations and premieres with composers such as Tan Dun, Joel Hoffman, John Harbison, Christopher Rouse, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lalo Schifrin, Paul Schoenfield, Bright Sheng, and Joan Tower.  An avid chamber musician, Mr. Lin appears at the Beijing Music Festival, as well as his perennial appearances performing at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Aspen Music Festival, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

As Music Director of La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest since 2001, Mr. Lin has helped develop a festival that once focused primarily on chamber music into a multidiscipline festival featuring dance, jazz and a burgeoning new music program commissioning composers as diverse as Chick Corea, Stewart Copeland, Leon Kirchner, Christopher Rouse, Wayne Shorter, Kaija Saariaho and Gunther Schuller. In Asia, Mr. Lin serves as Artistic Director of Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, and he was recently appointed Artistic Director of the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra’s Youth Music Summer Camp where he also conducts performances and serves as a member of the string faculty.

Cho-Liang Lin’s extensive discography includes recordings for Sony Classical, Decca, Ondine, Naxos and BIS. His albums have won such awards as Gramophone’s Record of the Year, as well as two Grammy Award nominations. His recordings reflect the breadth of his distinctive career including the standard violin concerti from Mozart to Stravinsky, chamber music from Brahms to Ravel and contemporary music from Chen Yi to Christopher Rouse.  His most recent discs include Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Sejong and Anthony Newman, violin works of Bright Sheng and Gordon Chin on Naxos, and the First Violin Concerto by George Tsontakis on Koch. Upcoming plans include recording a violin concerto by Joan Tower with the Nashville Symphony.

Born in Taiwan in 1960, Cho-Liang Lin began his violin lessons when he was 5 years old with Sylvia Lee. At the age of 12, he went to Sydney to continue his musical studies with Robert Pikler. Inspired by an encounter with Itzhak Perlman while in Sydney, he traveled to New York in 1975 to audition for Perlman’s teacher, the late Dorothy DeLay, at the Juilliard School. He was to study with Miss DeLay for six years. At the age of nineteen Mr. Lin made his New York debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival and soon thereafter with the New York Philharmonic and his concert career was launched. In 2000 Musical America named Mr. Lin its Instrumentalist of the Year.  He was invited to join the faculty of the Juilliard School in 1991. More recently he was appointed professor of violin at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He plays the 1715 "Titian" Stradivarius.