Ann Koonsman Chair
A native of Taipei, Taiwan, Swang Lin began the study of violin at the age of six. In 1984, he began studies with Zvi Zeitlin at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he earned both Bachelors and Masters degrees in violin performance. His other teachers include Naoko Tanaka, Chong-Ping Hsieh, and Hsing-Cheng Si-Tu. His performances have taken him throughout the United States, Germany, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, Italy and England as well as his native Taiwan. Lin is currently the Associate Concertmaster of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
Before joining the Fort Worth Symphony in 1991, Lin performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York. Engagements with these groups have led him to concert halls and festivals across the U. S. and Europe, including Royal Albert Hall in London, Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York and Kennedy Performing Arts Center in Washington D.C., among others. He held the concertmaster position with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and the Bear Valley Music Festival Orchestra (California), and has been a guest concertmaster with the Taipei City Symphony Orchestra, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra (Florida), and the East Texas Symphony Orchestra. Swang served as a member of the faculty and as a performing artist for the Utah Music Festival in Logan and Snowbird Institute, as well as the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra’s Youth Summer Music Camp in recent years upon invitations from Cho-Liang Lin and Mei-Ann Chen respectively. Other festivals in which he was engaged as a performing artist include Tanglewood, Caramoor, Colorado and Killington.
A frequent and favorite soloist with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Swang has also soloed with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Kaohsiung City Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan), Shanghai Broadcast Symphony Orchestra, Kunming Symphony Orchestra (China) and Taipei City Symphony Orchestra, Lake Lewisville Symphony (TX), among others. His performances have been heard nationally on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, and regionally on WRR, KBYU, WVPR and have been televised on Good Morning America and on PBS.
An active proponent of chamber music, Lin was the first violinist of the Montani String Quartet of Charleston, West Virginia. He regularly performs with the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth, Fine Arts Chamber Players of Dallas, Basically Beethoven, and with the Spectrum Chamber Music Society.
Swang Lin performs on the "Eugenie, ex-Mackenzie" Antonio Stradivari violin (1685), generously on loan to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra Association from an anonymous local patron.