 Twenty-three-year-old DaXun Zhang, may not play baseball, but he sure can play the double bass.
This IU School of Music student of Lawrence Hurst is fresh from a triumphant recital at the Terrrace Theater in Washington, D.C., March 22, and is the first bassist to be so featured in the Washington Performing Arts Society’s Kreeger String Series at the Kennedy Center. The Washington Post’s review was glowing, “Zhang made the best case for the bass as a solo instrument I've ever heard. A winner of the 2003 Young Concert Artists Auditions — the first bassist in the organization's 44-year history — Zhang plays soulfully, lyrically, and with an arresting delicacy that takes one by surprise.”(Read the full review here, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61704-2005Mar23.html.)
Zhang also appeared at the Kennedy Center in February where he joined fellow School of Music students as they splendidly introduced the 2005 Conservatory Project, a concert series dedicated to showcasing the remarkable vitality and virtuosity being cultivated by America's top music programs.
He worked with Yo-Yo Ma to record the soundtrack to a 10-part documentary series on the Silk Road; the CD is to be released on Sony Classical. This season, Zhang participates in Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project at Carnegie Hall. His schedule of recitals includes performances at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida, the University of Georgia, and the Buffalo Chamber Music Society.
Zhang was also awarded the Claire Tow Prize, which sponsored his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series; the Washington Performing Arts Society Prize to present his Washington debut at the Kennedy Center in 2005; The La Jolla Music Society Prize; the Orchestra New England Soloist Prize; and The Fergus Prize. He was the first double bassist ever to win First Prize in the 2003 Women's Auxiliary of the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra competition. In 2001, he was the youngest artist ever to win the International Society of Bassists Solo Competition. He has also received the Grand Prize of the American String Teachers Association National Solo Competition.
Zhang has appeared as soloist with the Pacific Symphony in California during their Chinese-American Composers' Festival, with Orchestra New England, and with the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle in Durham, North Carolina. He has given recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Western Michigan University, The Artist Series in Tallahassee, Florida, the La Jolla Music Society Summerfest, and the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati.
From a family of bassists in Harbin, China, Zhang has been playing the instrument since the age of nine and studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing beginning at the age of eleven. He continued his studies in the U.S. at the Interlochen Arts Academy, and is currently working towards his Bachelor of Music degree at the Indiana University School of Music
At the rate he’s going, his career will be full of many more home runs. |
