With a sound palette ranging from “commanding tone” to “delicate sentiment” (Calgary Herald), Zenas Hsu’s vibrant career is filled with chamber music, orchestral leadership, and education. The Taiwanese-American violinist is a founding member of Chamber Music by the Bay, a California-based interactive music series that reaches over 2,000 people annually. He is also a member of A Far Cry, a Grammy-nominated Boston ensemble, and is the concertmaster of Phoenix, another Boston orchestra that focuses on approachable concert experiences.

Zenas is a frequent guest artist of Bard Music West and the Wellesley Chamber Players. He has performed as a featured musician at the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, Hayden’s Ferry Chamber Music Series, Halcyon Music Festival, and Monadnock Music. He has given national and world premieres of works by composers including Robert Honstein, Philip Glass, Matthew Aucoin, Jesse Montgomery, and Lembit Beecher.

Hsu’s passion for chamber music was nurtured by members of the Borromeo, Brentano, Cleveland, Guarneri, Shanghai, and St. Lawrence string quartets, and with such artists as Lucy Chapman, Gilbert Kalish, Meng-Chieh Li, Robert McDonald, and Susan Bates. His collaborators include Steve Mackey, Anthony Marwood, Itzhak Perlman, Vivian Weilerstein, Jörg Widmann, Peabody Trio, and members of the Brentano, Cleveland, Parker, Juilliard, and Mendelssohn quartets.

Zenas has performed at Yellow Barn, Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, Banff Chamber Music Residency, Lucerne Festival Academy, Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Taos Academy of Music, Music Academy of the West, Icicle Creek Chamber Music Institute, and New York String Orchestra Academy.

A native of California, Zenas received his early training in the preparatory division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music at age sixteen, where he completed his bachelor’s degree, followed by a master’s and a Graduate Diploma at the New England Conservatory of Music. His teachers include Wei He, Ida Kavafian, Nicholas Kitchen, and Donald Weilerstein.