Recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2015 and Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists in 2017, violinist Paul Huang is considered one of the most distinctive artists of his generation. In 2012, in a review of Mr. Huang’s recital debut at The Kennedy Center, The Washington Post called him “an artist with the goods for a significant career.” In 2016, following Mr. Huang’s recital with pianist Jessica Xylina Osborne at The Phillips Collection, The Washington Post praised him again, noting that he “possesses a big, luscious tone, spot-on intonation and a technique that makes the most punishing string phrases feel as natural as breathing.”
Highlights of Mr. Huang’s recent engagements include an acclaimed debut at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, where he stepped in for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter to perform Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 with the Chamber Orchestra Vienna–Berlin; appearances with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the Houston Symphony, and Markus Stenz and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; and recital debuts at the Lucerne Festival and the Aspen Music Festival.
During the 2020–21 season, Mr. Huang opens the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra’s season and appears with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Lahav Shani, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, led by Tan Dun. Other highlights include engagements with the Brevard, Charlotte, Colorado, Des Moines, Eugene, Knoxville, Reading, and Tucson symphony orchestras.
Recital and chamber music performances in the 2020–21 season include return engagements with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Camerata Pacifica, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; a recital debut at the Savannah Music Festival with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott; a recital tour in Taiwan with pianist Helen Huang; and his debut with the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Mr. Huang’s recent recital engagements include Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series and a return appearance at The Kennedy Center, where he premiered Conrad Tao’s Threads of Contact for Violin and Piano during his recital evening with pianist Orion Weiss. He also stepped in for violinist Midori for performances with Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to critical acclaim, and he made debuts at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Seoul Arts Center, and the Louvre in Paris.
A frequent guest artist at music festivals worldwide, Mr. Huang has performed at the Seattle, Music@Menlo, Caramoor, La Jolla, Moritzburg, Kissinger Sommer, Sion, Orford, and PyeongChang chamber music festivals. His collaborators have included violinists Gil Shaham, and Cho-Liang Lin; violist Nobuko Imai; cellists Mischa Maisky, Jian Wang, and Lynn Harrell; and pianists Yefim Bronfman, Kirill Gerstein, and Marc-André Hamelin.
As the winner of the 2011 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Mr. Huang made critically acclaimed recital debuts at Lincoln Center in New York and The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Additional honors include First Prize at the 2009 Tibor Varga International Violin Competition Sion-Valais in Switzerland, the 2009 Chi-Mei Cultural Foundation Arts Award for Taiwan’s Most Promising Young Artists, the 2013 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and the 2014 Classical Recording Foundation Young Artist Award.
Paul Huang was born in Taiwan and began violin lessons at the age of seven. He is a recipient of the inaugural Kovner Fellowship at The Juilliard School, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees under Hyo Kang and I-Hao Lee. He plays the legendary 1742 “ex-Wieniawski” Guarneri del Gesù, on extended loan through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
