Violinist and violist Luosha Fang brings her adventurous spirit to music ranging from canonical repertoire to world premieres. As violinist, she has performed as soloist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Louisville Orchestra, the West Virginia Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra, with whom she gave the U.S. premiere of the Grażyna Bacewicz Violin Concerto No. 5. With the Albany Symphony Orchestra, she recorded George Tsontakis’s double violin concerto “Unforgettable” for release on NAXOS Records. As violist she has performed as soloist with the New Japan Philharmonic, the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, the TOHO-Gakuen Orchestra, the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Atlantic Symphony, and the Bay-Atlantic Symphony.
Ms. Fang is a winner of international competitions on both instruments, including the 2019 Classic Strings International Competition in Vienna and the 2018 Tokyo International Viola Competition. She was a winner of Astral Artists’ 2013 National Auditions and the S&R Foundation’s 2015 Washington Award, as both violinist and violist.
Ms. Fang’s chamber music career began in her undergraduate days as founding first violin of the Chimeng Quartet, which won the Silver Medal at the 2010 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Chamber music has been central to her career ever since, and she has played in the Marlboro, Krzyzowa, Kronberg, Ravinia, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Bard Music, Caramoor, Aspen, Music from Angel Fire, and Incontri in Terra di Siena festivals. She has worked with such musicians as Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff, Steven Isserlis, Antoine Tamestit , Mitsuko Uchida, Nobuko Imai, Viviane Hagner, Claudio Bohórquez, Matthias Kirschnereit, Pamela Frank, Timothy Eddy, Gilbert Kalish, Boris Giltburg, Peter Wiley, Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom, and members of the Guarneri and Juilliard string quartets. During 2021 and 2022, Ms. Fang was violist of the Pavel Haas Quartet in Prague, with whom she recorded the Brahms String Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111 and Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34.
She has performed at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, Kioi Hall in Tokyo, De Bijloke in Gent, the Graz and Vienna Musikvereins, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Meistersingerhalle in Nuremberg, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Muzikgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, the Flagey Piano Days in Brussels and the East Neuk Festival in Scotland.
Ms. Fang comes from a family of musicians. Her grandfather took violin lessons from the Alfred Wittenberg, a pupil of Joseph Joachim, who came with other Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to Shanghai in 1939. Under the guidance of her father, Fang made her debut at age eight in her native China with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3, and at sixteen moved to the USA 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 violin and Russian Studies, she attended the Curtis Institute of Music as a violin student of Ida Kavafian and Shmuel Ashkenasi. At this time, she began viola studies with Steven Tenenbom, and in 2016 entered the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid as a viola student of Nobuko Imai. In Fall 2019 she was invited to teach at the Bard College Conservatory of Music as instructor of violin/viola.
Always in pursuit of new artistic frontiers, Ms. Fang has also collaborated with the Almanac Dance Circus Theatre and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. She studied acting and theater at Bard College and the University of Pennsylvania. Fang plays on a Pietro Guarneri violin made in 1734 and a Dominique Peccatte bow kindly loaned by Dr. Ryuji Ueno. She plays on the ‘Josefowitz’ 1690 Andrea Guarneri viola.