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The UNC School of Music welcomes 130 high school string players to Greeley for the 24th Annual Western States Honor Orchestra Festival, held November 1 – 3 at the Union Colony Civic Center. Participants receive two days of specialized training in both solo and orchestral playing from UNC faculty, and have the opportunity to perform in the festival concert on November 3rd in Monfort Concert Hall. This year’s guest artists include conductor Johan Jonsson and soloist DaXun Zhang, double bass.
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Johan Jonsson, Professor of Violin & Viola and Music Department Head at Montana State University, is a native of Sweden and received his musical training in France, Sweden and the United States. He studied violin and chamber music at the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud in Aix-en-Provence and the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Bobigny, France; and he holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, Sweden. While in Stockholm, he was a member of the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra where he had the opportunity to play under such eminent conductors as Antal Dorati, Gennadij Rozdjestvensky, Yoav Talmi, Kurt Sanderling and Sixten Ehrling.
Jonsson, who came to the United States as a Fulbright grantee, also holds a Master of Music degree in violin performance from Indiana University where he studied with Paul Biss and Tadeusz Wronski. He has performed as recitalist, chamber musician and soloist with orchestras throughout the United States and in Europe, and he teaches and performs regularly at several summer music festivals in the US. He frequently collaborates with colleagues from around the US as a chamber musician, and is also in demand as a guest conductor. He served as Concertmaster of the Bozeman Symphony Orchestra from 1984 to 2005, and is also a former member of the Billings Symphony Orchestra. He is the Leader and Artistic Director of the String Orchestra of the Rockies, Montana's only professional string orchestra, founded in 1984. He is the director of the Summer Youth Orchestra Workshop, a music camp for talented high school students, which he founded in 1995.
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DaXun Zhang was the first double bass player to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 2003, Mr. Zhang was also awarded the Claire Tow Prize, which sponsored his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series and the Washington Performing Arts Society Prize, which sponsored his Washington, DC debut at the Kennedy Center, as well as the La Jolla Music Society Prize, the Orchestra New England Soloist Prize, and The Fergus Prize. In April 2006, Mr. Zhang performed Bizet’s Carmen Fantasy in YCA’s annual Irene Diamond Concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall with Keith Lockhart conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
Mr. Zhang was the first double bassist ever to win First Prize in the 2003 WAMSO (Women's Auxiliary of the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra) competition, leading to a performance with the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra with Osmo Vanska, conducting. In 2001, Mr. Zhang 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.
DaXun Zhang comes from a family of bassists in Harbin, China. He 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 received his Bachelor of Music at the Indiana University School of Music, where he worked with Lawrence Hurst. He is currently on the faculty at Northwestern University
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