Zenas Hsu bio

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BIOGRAPHY

Zenas Hsu is a Taiwanese-American violinist with a passion for chamber music, performing, teaching, and personal and entrepreneurial outreach. He is a founding member of the Zaffre String Quartet. Additionally, he is a founding member and current resident artist of Chamber Music by the Bay, a performance and educational series now in its fifth season in the San Francisco Bay Area. Currently based in Boston, Zenas is concertmaster and a founding member of Phoenix, an orchestral/chamber ensemble dedicated to bringing uncompromised performances to the modern audience. He was a prizewinner of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Association in 2013 as the violinist of Trio Concorde. He has also performed as a guest member of A Far Cry, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

 

Zenas's festival appearances include the Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival, Caroga Lake Music Festival, Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, Banff Chamber Music Residency, Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Yellow Barn, Lake George Music Festival, Taos Academy of Music, Music Academy of the West, Icicle Creek Chamber Music Institute, and Valdres Solo Academy. Zenas has studied chamber music with members of the Borromeo, Brentano, Cleveland, Guarneri, Juilliard, Leipzig, Miami, Shanghai, and St. Lawrence String Quartets, and with renowned musicians including Lucy Chapman, Hsinyun Huang, Gil Kalish, Meng-Chieh Li, Robert McDonald, Ian Swensen, Steven Tenenbom, Susan Bates, Laurence Lesser, and Vivian Weilerstein.

 

A native of California, Zenas received his early training primarily with Wei He in the preparatory division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music while spending musical summers at Music@Menlo Chamber Music Institute, the New York String Orchestra Seminar, and the Hotchkiss Summer Portals. He was accepted at age sixteen to the Curtis Institute of Music to study with Ida Kavafian. Upon receiving his Bachelor of Music degree four years later, Zenas moved to Boston and received his Master of Music and Graduate Diploma degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Nicholas Kitchen and Donald Weilerstein.

 

He plays on a Gaspare Lorenzini violin on generous loan from the Chi Mei Museum Violin Collection.

Zenas's artistic endeavors include photography, recording engineering, and reading. He maintains a strong interest in the productive use of technology in the music world.