Amelia Chan

violinist | Creator, First Principles Violin

Amelia Chan is currently concertmaster of the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong (CCOHK).

She came to this position from her tenure as concertmaster of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra (US). An experienced leader, Amelia has served in the concertmaster chair under acclaimed conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, Michael Tilson Thomas, Manfred Huss, Sergiu Commissiona, Anton Coppola, Zdeněk Mácal, Jorge Mester, Julius Rudel, and Gerard Schwarz. She has also performed with the New York Philharmonic extensively. As a chamber musician, Amelia has served as first violinist of the Montclaire String Quartet, and has collaborated with guitarist Sharon Isbin, accordionist Richard Galliano, violinist Lara St. John, the Ying Quartet, members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players (NYC), among others. She has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the West Virginia Symphony, the International Virtuosi Orchestra on tour in Central America, the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra (NYC), the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra (NYC), and the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong. She has shared the stage as co-soloist with acclaimed flutist Sir James Galway, and frequently acts as director for the City Chamber Orchestra. She has performed at the Costa Rica Music Festival, the Guatemala Music Festival, Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival in New York and the Pacific Music Festival (Japan).

Amelia has been heard on WQXR, New York; WQED, Pittsburgh; West Virginia Public Broadcasting; BBC Radio Scotland, Scotland; and RTHK Radio 4, Hong Kong.

As an educator, Amelia approaches the teaching of technique through the lens of whole-body biomechanics, and on the principle that techniques of playing an instrument need to be relational to the body, and to how it moves, instead of relying on a static one-size-fits-all method. She believes in a focused and deep education that goes beyond rote training, where the student learns discernment and critical thinking, while sifting through the layers of intellect needed to decipher the depths of the musical art, to get to the natural, joyful simplicity of music-making.

Amelia holds undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees from the Mannes College of Music and Manhattan School of Music (NY). She began her violin studies in the junior school at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Her major teachers included Thomas Wang, Alice Waten, Albert Markov, Shirley Givens, Lisa Kim, Yoko Takebe, Sheryl Staples, Glenn Dicterow, and double-bassist Julius Levine.

For more information on Amelia, please go to her Instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/ameliachanviolin/ 

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"Concertmaster Amelia Chan in particular played with passion, acting as the vibrant soul of the ensemble.” South China Morning Post 

“…gutsy solo violin throughout [by] concertmaster Amelia Chan…” theprickle.org

From Degrees to Feel: First Principles of Embodied Rotation

May 12, 2026  /  Amelia Chan

To have good control of the instrument requires precise control of very fine degrees of rotation. Just how fine? Consider this: for the left hand there are all the fingerboard positions, plus the different angles of different strings, not to mention various angles of hand frames for different configurations of intervals (e.g., major 3rds vs. minor 3rds).

With the bow arm, there is not only the different positions of the strings, but also various parts of the bow along its length. In order for them to work together, the whole body needs to work together in order to rotate to very precise degrees. And depending on the individual body, those degrees will shift according to a person's own alignment patterns.

Beyond basic descriptions like pointing the scroll at a 45-degree angle or "more to the left/right," there is much finer precision. For instance, in any given moment, the chest is rotated a certain amount to the left, the lower spine counters in the opposite direction, and the lower body generates torsion in varying directions—with the ankle, foot, lower leg, and upper leg all participating in the whole chain.

However, we can't be thinking about this in mathematical terms when performing—well, not even when practicing! With the hundreds of joints and all the complexity of the human body, we need to translate this into a feel-sense in our playing. So, to pinpoint how exactly far left or right each individual's scroll should point at any given moment (because that's not static), we factor all these other things in. We start from a first principles understanding of what the body needs to do for that specific motion or posture, then examine the most natural way for our body to execute that motion. Along the way we might discover that our body has inherent difficulties with certain rotations in specific directions even without the instrument, so we need to try to correct that. And finally we expand and refine the range we need to arrive at the most natural way each of us can accomplish that action successfully.

And swinging is one way that can naturally help us determine many of these trajectories that the different parts of our bodies need to go. My belief is that many of the difficulties of violin playing come from its asymmetrical nature. If the trunk isn't organized well enough, the limbs eventually hit a wall in natural motion—and that's where a lot of the root of technical difficulties lie. But it's almost impossible to analyze mathematically what needs to happen in the whole body. I feel that swinging can provide a lot of clues to this puzzle and has the potential to help naturally solve many of them. I'll share more about that.

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