Cho-Liang Lin

Cho-Liang Lin (Lin Cho-liang, Chinese: 林昭亮, born January 29, 1960) is a Taiwanese-American violinist who is renowned for his appearances as a soloist with major orchestras. Musical America named him its "Instrumentalist of the Year" in 2000. He founded the Taipei International Music Festival in 1997, the largest classical music festival in the history of Taiwan, performing to an indoor audience of over 53,000 and the Taipei Music Academy & Festival in 2019, a summer music festival. Cho-Liang Lin is a violinist whose career has spanned the globe for more than four decades. Lin was born in 1960 to a Hakka family in Hsinchu, then a quiet college town 70 km (43 mi) south of Taipei, a research center where his father worked as a nuclear physicist. He began playing violin at the age of five. Recognizing that he needed to pursue his violin studies abroad, he made his way to Australia by himself when he was only 12 years old; he spent three years in Sydney. His commanding technique and precocious abilities then led him to Juilliard School, where he studied with the eminent Dorothy DeLay, teacher to several renowned soloists such as Itzhak Perlman, Gil Shaham, Midori Goto, et al. He made his public debut in New York City at the age of 19, playing Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 at Avery Fisher Hall.