Biography

Luke Hsu was born in 1990 in the United States. He started his violin studies in Houston with Fredell Lack and Emanuel Borok and debuted with the Houston Symphony at the age of 16. He then studied with Cho-Liang Lin at the Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory, and Rodney Friend at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He graduated from all these institutions with numerous honours and prizes. His other teachers and close mentors include Vivian Hornik-Weilerstein, Kim Kashkashian, and Lucy Chapman. He currently studies with Pierre Amoyal at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. 

Luke attended several master classes, among others the IMS Prussia Cove and Verbier Academy. He also received a scholarship from the International Academy of Music in Liechtenstein and participated in the intensive music weeks held there.

Luke has received many top accolades from around the world. He is alaureate of the 2019 Queen Elisabeth competition and won a major prize at the 2018 “Premio Paganini” in Genoa, Italy. He’s a top prize winner of the “15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition” 2016 in Poznan, Poland, where he also received a prize for his interpretation of the Mozart concerti. Other achievements include the 1st prize and the “Isang Yun prize” at the “12th Isangyun International Violin Competition” 2014 in South Korea, a top prize winner at the “10th Nielsen International Violin Competition” 2016 in Denmark, a 1st prize winner of the “Ima Hogg Houston 2016 Symphony Competition” and a laureate of the 2013 “Concours Musical International de Montreal”. 

He has performed recitals at Wigmore Hall, Kennedy Center, Jordan Hall and Carnegie Hall among many others. As a soloist, he has performed with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Odense Symphony Orchestra, the Poznan Philharmonic, the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra of the Polish Radio, the Tongyeong Festival Orchestra and the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has worked closely with such conductors as Nikolaj Znaider, Hugh Wolff, Pascal Vierrot, Marek Pijarowski and Cristian Macelaru, and his performances have been recorded and broadcasted on US radio station’s NPR, Canada’s CBC and Denmark’s DR, including a performance of Vaughan Williams’s Lark Ascending with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra featured on NPR’s Performance Today. 

Luke is also an avid chamber musician and is the violinist of the Beacon St Trio, a piano trio formed in the New England Conservatory consisting of Sophie Scolnik-Brower (piano) and Rainer Crosett (cello). In addition to his piano trio, he has collaborated with artists such as Cho-Liang Lin, Gil Shaham, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Peter Frankl, Colin Carr and musicians from the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal. Festival appearances include La Jolla SummerFest, Yellow Barn Chamber Music, San Miguel de Allende Chamber Music Festival, Aspen Music School and Festival, Perlman Music Program, and Tongyeong International Music Festival.