Amelia Chan

violinist

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

On music, hope... via Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time

June 09, 2014  /  Amelia Chan

I'd like to christen my website with a post about Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. I think it serves as a nice curtain-raiser to my new page, as it touches on an integral, albeit small, part of the core of who I am as a musician and a person. In its own way, it explains at least one facet of what music means to me, and where my work sprung from. 

The question has always been asked whether the arts, music included, are mere luxuries, non-essentials. And most people believe that they are important solely for the purpose of entertainment or pleasure. This is a topic on which I could write endlessly about: but for now I will just start with the back story of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time.

Messiaen was imprisoned in a Nazi German prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz in the winter of 1941. He discovered that among his fellow prisoners were a clarinetist, a violinist, and a cellist. Messiaen wrote the piece while imprisoned with the help of a sympathetic guard who provided him with a pencil and paper, and solitude to write in. It had its première on a cold January night in an unheated barrack. The audience, including both prisoners and German guards, listened to that performance in sub-zero temperature in absolute rapt silence. Messiaen later said, "Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension."

There's another story about how the premiering cellist Etienne Pasquier got his cello. The prisoners donated 65 marks out of their earnings from chores for him to buy a cello, a bow, and a rosin. Imagine that! Imagine what dire circumstance these war prisoners were in, what piddly earnings they had. What essential, sensible items would one spend those pitiful few dollars on? Probably a precious loaf of bread in the midst of starvation? An extra shirt for the fatally brutal winter? Well, it's a cello!!! A cello not because it could be burned to make a fire for warmth, but so that music could be played from it! Pasquier said that when the German soldiers escorted him back to the camp from the music store, the prisoners were elated and begged him to play for hours. He said, "Oh! They cried for joy. In my whole life, I have never seen such enthusiasm. They made me play until the curfew." 

Art is that barest of thread which humankind hangs on to in times of total desperation. We may be lucky to not have to endure the extent of desperation and hopelessness as Messiaen and his fellow prisoners had. But we have our modern-day despair, too. And even small day-to-day setbacks and disappointments erode us at our core bit by bit - we would not survive them if it wasn't for hope. We may have the luxury, or we simply are not aware enough, to know how hope has kept us going. Or we take it for granted. But it is indeed just as essential for our survival as it was for those prisoners. 

 

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tags / hope, Messiaen, arts