CONOZCA AL ARTISTA

Andy Lin

Taiwanese born violist and erhuist (Chinese violin), Wei-Yang Andy Lin, is recognized as one of the most promising and the only active performers who specialized in both western and eastern instruments.  Praised by The Strad “The great Molto adagio…..elicited some of the night’s most sensitive work, especially from Wei-Yang Andy Lin on viola.” and New York Times “Taiwanese-born violist Wei-Yang Andy Lin..…is also a virtuoso on the erhu, and he gave a brilliant performance.”  He is the artistic director and co-founder of the New Asia Chamber Music Society.  Andy came to the U.S. in 1997 to attend the Idyllwild Arts Academy and holds his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School with full scholarship, and received his Doctor’s degree in Musical Arts from SUNY Stony Brook also with full scholarship.  His former teachers have included Donald McInnes, Michael Tree, Toby Appel, Hsinyun Huang, Katherine Murdock and Daniel Panner.  Andy has won numerous competitions including Taiwan National Viola Competition, the Idyllwild Concerto Competition, First Prize in the 2008 Juilliard Viola Concerto Competition and subsequently made his Lincoln Center solo debut at the Avery Fisher Hall (now David Geffen Hall) with the Juilliard Orchestra.  He was also the winner of the 2009 SUNY Stony Brook Concerto Competition.  He has also appeared as soloist with orchestras such as Yonkers Philharmonic Orchestra, Orford Academy Orchestra, Incheon Philharmonic, New York Classical Players, and Children’s Orchestra Society.

In addition to his solo career, Andy is an avid chamber musician and is a founding member of the award winning string quartet, the Amphion String Quartet.  The quartet was a winner of the 2011 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition and was on the roster of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society CMS2 Program from 2013~2016.  The quartet has released their debut album with the Nimbus Records in England, in which the album was selected by the New York Times as “The Best 25 Classical Music Recordings of 2015.”  Andy is also a member of the Musicians of Lenox Hill and serves as principal violist of the New York Classical Players and the Solisti Ensemble.  He has also served as a principal violist of the International Sejong Soloists.  He has been invited to perform chamber music with Itzhak Perlman where The New York Times described “Mr. Perlman, playing first violin..… answered in kind by the violist Wei-Yang Andy Lin.”

In addition to his accomplishments as a classical musician, he is also an active erhu player.  He has recorded film music for a number of movies and short films, including “The Blood Brothers” and the award winning short film “Daughters” (Best Original Score at NYU Tisch Film Festival).  He has performed the erhu solo part at the U.S. Premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ “Kommilitonen!” with the Juilliard Opera Production, as well as the world premiere of Jeeyoung Kim’s “Engraft” for solo erhu and string orchestra with Solisti Ensemble at Carnegie Hall.  He also premiered Winnie Lan-In Yang’s “Fantasy for Erhu and Strings” with the New York Classical Players.  He has been invited by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra of the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago to play the solo erhu part in “Iris dévoilée” by Chen Qi-Gang.  He has also appeared as an erhu solo in the U.S. Premiere of Yeow-Kwon Chung’s “Red Cliff” Piano Concerto with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.  In fall 2017, he performed a haegeum concerto “Choosang” on the erhu with Busan Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra at the Busan Maru International Music Festival in Korea.  He has recently performed an erhu concerto “Wild Grass” by Wenjing Guo with the Juilliard Orchestra at its Focus! Festival final concert at Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in which it was featured on the New York Times, this also made him the only person in the Juilliard history who performed concertos with the Juilliard Orchestra on both western and eastern instruments.  He has also been invited by the Metropolitan Museum to give recitals at their Gallery Concert Series and Patrons Lounge Concert.  He has appeared at OK Mozart and Chamber Music Northwest festivals, as well as a recital at the Caramoor Center for the Music and the Arts.  He also performs annually at the Spring Celebration presented by the Chinese Cultural Arts Institute in Harrisburg Pennsylvania.  Andy plays on a viola made by one of his best friends Jacob Ho.