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

Violin Technique And Angles

April 20, 2022  /  Amelia Chan

I’ve come to think that so much of figuring out violin technique has to do with solving problems with angles. In my opinion, some of the traditional teaching ideas could be misguiding because of two things:

1. They operate on the idea that we move from the center of the body (middle), but playing the violin does not-it’s an asymmetrical activity. Not only do we not rotate from the middle, we also have to apply force to an object in front of us, and to our left, and to even hold and support weight on that side while having the R side lean into it. Figuring out how to do all this from the idea of moving around the spine as the axis just isn’t logical. 2. Identifying and separating L hand and R hand technique can be useful at times for clarity, but too often the ideas themselves disregard that the two sides are connected. And not only that, the hand is connected to the arm to the shoulder to the side body to the pelvis, etc…. Even the terms L hand and R hand technique feel like misnomers to me as they are too narrow to reflect what we actually need to do to play.

Think about the angles of all we do. Bow on strings doesn’t go up and down, but sideways. Depending on which string (and then where the L hand is) the angle is entirely different. We don’t press bow down on string-it’s really more oblique for the most part. And think about it. It’s easy to bear weight if something comes down on you horizontally. Tilted is much more difficult for the body to organize to receive.

Shifting is not up and down either, otherwise one jams into the rib of the violin past fourth position. Our elbow’s range of motion is limited by the fact that it’s attached to the upper arm to the shoulder. So constantly to have only the instruction to push elbow in under the violin, for example, seems to defy the structure of our anatomy.

I find it helpful to think about technique as figuring out which angle to apply to different shapes. Almost all the traditional terms we use (up bow down bow etc) in music do not reflect the actual physical motion required. I think it’s worthwhile to re-examine whether or how these might have affected the way we think about how to play.

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