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Concertmaster of the
Montreal Symphony Orchestra since 2008,
Andrew Wan is also active as a soloist and chamber music player. He is also a professor at Montreal's McGill University and a member of the
New Orford String Quartet.
Wan was born in 1983 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He took up the violin as a kindergartner but attended a competitive high school where technical careers were favored, and at first, he did not aim toward a musical career. However, he applied to the Juilliard School in New York and was admitted, studying there with
Ron Copes and
Masao Kawasaki. He stayed on for a master's degree at Juilliard and was admitted into the prestigious Artist Diploma program, winning the school's concerto competition with a performance of
Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61. The work would play an important part in
Wan's developing career: in 2007, he played the concerto again with the
Montreal Symphony Orchestra at the OSM Standard Life Competition and won the grand prize, impressing local critics and audiences in Montreal. Conductor
Kent Nagano invited
Wan to audition for the orchestra's open concertmaster position, and in 2008,
Wan accepted the position. He was among the youngest concertmasters of a major symphony orchestra anywhere in the world.
Wan continued his career as a soloist, playing dates around the western hemisphere, in China, and Switzerland, and he has often played violin concertos with the
Montreal Symphony. These included a new work written for him,
Serge Arcuri's Les mouvements de l'âme. He has appeared at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and the Salle Gaveau in Paris.
Wan has recorded the three violin concertos of Saint-Saëns with
Nagano and the
Montreal Symphony for the Analekta label, and he has also appeared in ensembles on recordings for Onyx, Bridge, ATMA, and Naxos. In 2018, with pianist
Charles Richard-Hamelin, he recorded an album of
Beethoven violin sonatas for Analekta.
Wan is on the faculty at McGill University's Schulich School of Music, and he has also taught classes at Quebec's Orford Musique (Orford Music Festival).