Felix Fan - Cellist is a celebrated young cellist whose eclectic music-making and leadership reflect a 21st Century sensibility rare among musicians.  He is a musical explorer whose journey takes him from a performance of Tan Dun’s music one day to a Devorak Concerto the next.

This superb 26-year-old musician – with his unique musical curiosity – has won praise as a recitalist, chamber music partner and soloist.  Because of his interest in playing outside the standard repertory, Mr. Fan founded Muzik3, an eclectic concert series consisting of classical, contemporary, and improvised music.  Held annually since 1998, Muzik3 attracts an enthusiastic following and is recognized as one of the West Coast’s most important contemporary and experimental music events.

Mr. Fan’s globe-straddling 2001-2002 season includes dates in Taipei (with the Taipei Symphony), Lausanne (in recital with pianist Andrew Russo), London (in recital at the Wallace Collection), Madrid (with the RTVE Orchestra), Santa Barbara (with the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra), San Diego (in March 2002 for the fifth annual Muzik3 Festival), and in Summer 2002 at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Mr. Fan has worked closely with significant living composers including Oliver Knussen, Tan Dun, Hans Werner Henze, and the Swedish bass guitarist Jonas Hellborg.  He has appeared in many established concert halls including: the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Rudolfinum in Prague, Budapest’s Vigado, the Palau in Valencia, the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Izumi Hall in Osaka, Casals Hall in Tokyo and the Salle Cortot in Paris.  He has also concertized with the Pacific, Syracuse, San Diego, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Taiwan National symphonies.

In 1997, the renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma invited Mr. Fan to join him on stage for the opening concert of the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s Celebrity Series.  Other notable chamber music collaborations have included performances with Janos Starker (one of his music mentors) and an acclaimed tour of Taiwan with violinist Cho-Liang Lin in 1995.  An artistically successful duo, Fan and Lin reunited for a performance at Mr. Lin’s 2000 Taipei International Music Festival, which also featured such luminaries as Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Leon Fleisher, and Gil Shaham.  During the 2000-01 season, Mr. Fan and Mr. Lin joined the San Diego Symphony for an inspired rendition of Brahm’s Double Concerto.

Other highlights of the 2000-01 season included the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival working with composer Charles Wuorinen, at SummerFest La Jolla collaborating with composer/violinist Mark O’Connor, performing with the Southern California ska band, Common Sense, his own Muzik3 festival, and playing Tan Dun’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for Cello and Orchestra in Taipei and Hong Kong.  Since 1992, Mr Fan has appeared annually in SummerFest La Jolla and has had engagements at the Santa Fe Chamber Mucis Festival, New York’s Bargemusic series, and the 43rd Festival Internacional de Santander.

Born in Boston and raised in San Diego, Mr. Fan’s prodigious talent was first recognized at the age of 4.  He has studied under the eminent Hungarian cellist Janos Starker at Indiana University, with Eleonore Schoenfeld at the University of Southern California, with Aldo Parisot at Yale University, and with Boris Pergamenschikov in Cologne, Germany.  In 1993, at the age of 17, he was honored at the White House by President Clinton as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts. 

Mr. Fan plays the historic “Hausmann” Stradivarius.  Built in 1724, it was the cello on which Brahms’ immortal Double Concerto was premiered.