JESSICA HUNG ASSOCIATE CONCERTMASTER

The Assad Meymandi and Family Chair

Violinist Jessica Hung was appointed as Associate Concertmaster of the North Carolina Symphony in 2023. Previously she served as Concertmaster of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra in Ohio from 2008 to 2023. For the 2022/23 season, she was a member of the Jacksonville Symphony and the Orlando Philharmonic, after completing a one-year appointment as Principal Second Violin of the Sarasota Orchestra. She is currently on leave from the Jacksonville Symphony. She has also performed throughout Florida with The Florida Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, Brevard Symphony Orchestra, and The Venice Symphony.

Hung previously served as Concertmaster with the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, and Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra, and as Assistant Concertmaster with the Akron Symphony Orchestra. As a college student, she gave her debut performances of the iconic violin solos in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade at age 18 and Capriccio espagnol at age 21. She has since performed as a substitute violinist for the major orchestras of Cleveland, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Milwaukee, as well as the Boston Symphony Orchestra (as a Tanglewood Fellow) and the New World Symphony. Her playing can be heard on three live-recorded albums with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and Artistic Director Neal Gittleman conducting, including a 2011 performance of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.

In 2022, she was chosen as Concertmaster of the orchestra for Disney’s Harmonious Live!, a special performance of the EPCOT nighttime spectacular currently streaming worldwide on Disney+ and featuring Auli’I Cravalho, Idina Menzel, Lindsey Stirling, and other musical stars. She made her live television debut as a member of Disney’s Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra in 1998, with Bernadette Peters hosting.

Hung’s solo appearances include over two dozen subscription series performances with the Dayton Philharmonic, featuring concertos by Beethoven, Bruch, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Sean Neukom (world premiere in 2018), Florence Price, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Broadcasts of concerts recorded live at the Schuster Performing Arts Center during her prolific tenure can be heard nearly every Saturday evening on Discover Classical, Dayton’s public radio station. In addition, she has appeared as guest soloist with the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Waukegan Symphony Orchestra, University of Chicago Chamber Orchestra, Wright State University Symphony Orchestra, and the University of Dayton Orchestra.

As a chamber musician and arts administrator, Hung served as both First Violinist of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra Principal String Quartet and Associate Artistic Director of Chamber Music for the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, where she launched two experimental concert series: Project “Edge” throughout the 2017/18 season, encompassing 10 free community outreach performances in unconventional venues supported by a grant from the Miriam Rosenthal Foundation for the Arts; and “Summer Streams” in 2020, a series of live-streaming virtual chamber music concerts for the pandemic era, in conjunction with Dayton public television network ThinkTV. In 2022, she joined the Jacksonville Symphony Violin and Harp Duo with Principal Harp Kayo Ishimaru-Fleisher.

Her festival performances have taken her from such venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam to Carnegie Hall in New York. Credits include the Blossom Music Festival, Meadowmount School of Music, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, National Arts Centre Young Artists Program, New York String Orchestra Seminar, Heifetz International Music Institute, and Encore School for Strings. Distinguished conductors she has worked with include Roberto Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, Bobby McFerrin, and Bramwell Tovey, in his first and final appearance as the beloved new Music Director of the Sarasota Orchestra.

Hung’s competition awards on the violin include winning Northwestern University’s Thaviu String Competition and a Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Scholarship. She was a finalist at the 1998 Chicago Symphony Orchestra Feinberg Youth Auditions with honorary adjudicator Pierre Boulez on the panel.

Hung received a bachelor’s degree in violin performance with academic honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was a student of William Preucil and Stephen Rose. She began her undergraduate studies as a student of Gerardo Ribeiro at Northwestern University. She performed in violin master classes for Mauricio Fuks, Malcolm Lowe, Ruggiero Ricci, Gil Shaham, and Pinchas Zukerman. She decided to pursue a career as a leading orchestral violinist during her formative experiences in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, which she joined at age 14. She is also an alumna of the Midwest Young Artists Conservatory and the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras, serving as one of the youngest members of an Eastern European tour under then-Music Director Rossen Milanov.

A violist as well, Hung was a two-time first-prize winner at the Chicago Viola Society Solo Competition and was invited to participate in the 2003 Lionel Tertis International Viola Festival and Competition. Her viola teachers were Helen Callus, Li-Kuo Chang, and Arnold Sklar, and she performed in viola master classes for Atar Arad, Bruno Pasquier, and Lars Anders Tomter.

Outside of her musical career, she holds a Master of Social Work degree from Widener University and has worked in the fields of hospice and mental health. Born in Kankakee, Illinois, to Taiwanese parents, Hung grew up in the Chicago area, made her home in Ohio for 16 years, and now resides in Raleigh with her husband Paul, her daughter, and their cat Dido.