Sean Wang
Sean Wang is a violinist, conductor, and scholar whose career bridges Western classical traditions and contemporary intercultural repertoire. A native of Taiwan, he currently serves as Assistant Dean of Academics at The Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School and Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Toronto, where he also teaches graduate music history.
As a violinist, Wang has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician across North America, Europe, and Asia, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Smithsonian Museum, Banff Centre, and numerous major venues in Europe and East Asia. From 2010 to 2014, he performed regularly as concertmaster with the Grammy-nominated Ars Lyrica Houston. Earlier in his career, he was Violinist-in-Residence with the Guild of Composers, Inc. in New York City and was affiliated with Houston’s CMA/ASCAP award-winning contemporary music ensemble Musiqa.
An active recording artist, Wang is a founding member of Trio Solari (est. 2006), with clarinetist Chad Burrow and pianist Amy Cheng, and also recorded with Duo Yumeno and Ars Lyrica Houston. His four-disc recording of Johann Jakob Walther’s Hortulus Chelicus – the first complete recording of this monumental 1688 collection of 28 virtuosic violin sonatas – has received excellent reviews. American Record Guide praised him as “a brilliant violinist,” citing the “exceedingly high” quality of his playing. His recordings appear on the Centaur, Sono Luminus, Albany, and MSR Classics labels.
As a conductor, Wang brings a curatorial sensibility to the podium. He previously served as Music Director of the Longy Conservatory Orchestra and conducted symphonic repertoire, premieres of new music, and fully staged productions of operas by Donizetti, Offenbach, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, and Menotti, with a particular affinity for chamber-size and intercultural works.
Wang is Co-Artistic Director of INTERWOVEN, a New York–based ensemble dedicated to commissioning and presenting works that integrate Western and East Asian instruments and aesthetics. With INTERWOVEN, he has curated and performed programs at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery, Vancouver’s Müzewest Concerts, the Sound Check! Festival in Seattle, and at universities across North America. These projects feature newly commissioned works involving instruments such as koto, shamisen, saenghwang, piri, and erhu alongside Western strings. In 2023, he received a Canada Council for the Arts grant to expand INTERWOVEN’s activities in Canada.
A dedicated pedagogue, Wang has taught masterclasses at institutions including the University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame, National Taiwan Normal University, Hong Kong Baptist University, Soochow University (in Taiwan and China), among others. His previous faculty appointments included Longy School of Music of Bard College, the University of Houston, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Connecticut. He is a regular faculty member at the Cremona International Music Academy in Italy and has been in residence at summer festivals throughout Europe and the United States.
Trained also as a musicologist, Wang has published in Notes, presented at international conferences including the American Musicological Society, and written as a music critic for San Francisco Classical Voice. His teaching and research interests range from early music to contemporary intercultural performance practice. Since 2022, he has taught graduate seminars in music history and supervised doctoral research at the University of Toronto.
He holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music (BM, violin), The Juilliard School (MM, conducting; Bruno Walter Fellow), and Stanford University (PhD, musicology and humanities). His principal teachers included Rafael Druian, Otto-Werner Mueller, Jacques-Louis Monod, and William Mahrt.