Top Songs By Andrew Wan
More albums from Andrew Wan
About Andrew Wan
Hometown
Edmonton, Canada
Born
1983
Genre
Classical
Concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra since 2008, Andrew Wan is also active as a soloist and chamber music player. He is also a professor at Montreal's McGill University and a member of the New Orford String Quartet.
Wan was born in 1983 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He took up the violin as a kindergartner but attended a competitive high school where technical careers were favored, and at first, he did not aim toward a musical career. However, he applied to the Juilliard School in New York and was admitted, studying there with Ron Copes and Masao Kawasaki. He stayed on for a master's degree at Juilliard and was admitted into the prestigious Artist Diploma program, winning the school's concerto competition with a performance of Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61. The work would play an important part in Wan's developing career: in 2007, he played the concerto again with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra at the OSM Standard Life Competition and won the grand prize, impressing local critics and audiences in Montreal. Conductor Kent Nagano invited Wan to audition for the orchestra's open concertmaster position, and in 2008, Wan accepted the position. He was among the youngest concertmasters of a major symphony orchestra anywhere in the world. Wan continued his career as a soloist, playing dates around the western hemisphere, in China, and Switzerland, and he has often played violin concertos with the Montreal Symphony. These included a new work written for him, Serge Arcuri's Les mouvements de l'âme. He has appeared at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and the Salle Gaveau in Paris.
Wan has recorded the three violin concertos of Saint-Saëns with Nagano and the Montreal Symphony for the Analekta label, and he has also appeared in ensembles on recordings for Onyx, Bridge, ATMA, and Naxos. In 2018, with pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin, he recorded an album of Beethoven violin sonatas for Analekta. Wan is on the faculty at McGill University's Schulich School of Music, and he has also taught classes at Quebec's Orford Musique (Orford Music Festival). ~ James Manheim
Similar to: Andrew Wan
Discover more music and artists similar to Andrew Wan, like Alim Beisembayev, Luis Fernando Pérez, Romain Leleu Sextet
