Zenas Hsu, Concertmaster

About Zenas

With a sound palette ranging from a ‘commanding tone’ to ‘delicate sentiment’ (Calgary Herald), Taiwanese-American violinist Zenas Hsu leads a vibrant career filled with chamber music, orchestral leadership, and education. He is a founding member of Chamber Music by the Bay, a California-based interactive music series that reaches over 2,000 people annually. He is also a member of A Far Cry, a Grammy nominated ensemble in Boston, and is the concertmaster of Phoenix, an orchestra based in Boston focused on approachable concert experiences.

Zenas is a frequent guest artist of Bard Music West and the Wellesley Chamber Players, and guest concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He has performed as a featured musician at the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, Hayden's Ferry Chamber Music Series, Halcyon Music Festival, and Monadnock Music Festival. He has performed world and national premieres of works by Robert Honstein, Philip Glass, Matthew Aucoin, Jessie Montgomery, Lembit Beecher, and others.

His passion for chamber music was nurtured by members of the Borromeo, Brentano, Cleveland, Guarneri, Shanghai, and St. Lawrence String Quartets, and with such artists as Lucy Chapman, Gil Kalish, Meng-Chieh Li, Robert McDonald, and Susan Bates. Zenas has also collaborated in performance with Steve Mackey, Anthony Marwood, Itzhak Perlman, Vivian Weilerstein, Jörg Widmann, and members of the Brentano, Cleveland, Parker, Juilliard, Mendelssohn quartets and Peabody Trio.

Music festival appearances include Yellow Barn, Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, Banff Chamber Music Residency, Lucerne Festival Academy, Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Taos Academy of Music, Music Academy of the West, Icicle Creek Chamber Music Institute, and New York String Orchestra Academy.

A native of California, Zenas received his early training in the preparatory division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He was accepted at age sixteen to the Curtis Institute of Music for his Bachelor of Music degree, and received his Master of Music and Graduate Diploma degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music. His teachers include Wei He, Ida Kavafian, Nicholas Kitchen, and Donald Weilerstein.