ZLATOMIR FUNG, CELLIST

Thursday, January 31, 2019
Tryon Fine Arts Center
8 pm

Zlatomir Fung is from Westborough, Massachusetts. He began to play the cello at the age of three and since then has had the privilege to share the music he loves with audiences around the world. He derives great enjoyment from the sheer act of making music, also through musical outreach in schools and retirement homes.

He currently studies cello performance at the Julliard School. Outside of music, he plays chess competitively and has completed his first short film.

Fung has won a number of international competitions and was recognized as a 2016 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts. He was the first prize winner at the 2016 George Enescu International Cello Competition, the 2015 Johansen International Competition for Young String Players, the 2014 Stulberg International String Competition, and the 2014 Irving Klein International Competition. And in November 2017 he was a First Prize Winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions.

Fung has been a soloist with the Ann Arbor Symphony, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Santa Cruz Symphony, Boston Pops, the Lausanne Sinfonietta, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the State Philharmonic of Sibiu, and the New England Philharmonic, among others.

He won a Davidson Fellows Scholarship for his project, “Folk Music Influence in the Classical Tradition.” He is one of only twenty students across the country to receive this honor. He considers this an extraordinary honor; “to be listed alongside some of the most brilliant young minds alive today is surreal.”

He has been featured on NPR’s radio show From the Top a number of times, as well as on Performance Today. 

In reflecting, Fung says, “My selection of performances gives voice to the more unusual crevices of the cello repertoire. Music is a mystical art: it can at once dazzle the intellect and inspire heartfelt nostalgia. I do very much hope that the nature of my performances–both in the quality of playing and the selection of music–touches audiences, giving them an emotional and spiritual outlet.”