Luosha Fang, violin and Arseniy Gusev, piano at the Nicholas Roerich Museum

Violinist and violist Luosha Fang brings her adventurous spirit to music ranging from canonical repertoire to world premieres. As violinist, she has performed as soloist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Atlantic Symphony, the Louisville Orchestra, the West Virginia Symphony, the Bay-Atlantic Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra, with whom she gave the U.S. premiere of the Grażyna Bacewicz Violin Concerto No. 5. With the Albany Symphony Orchestra, she recorded George Tsontakis’s double violin concerto “Unforgettable” for release on NAXOS Records. She recently performed the U.S. premiere of the Kurtag Concertantes with The Orchestra Now at Carnegie Hall. As violist, she has performed as soloist with the New Japan Philharmonic, the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, the TOHO-Gakuen Orchestra, the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra.

Ms. Fang is a winner of international competitions on both instruments, including the 2019 Classic Strings International Competition in Vienna and the 2018 Tokyo International Viola Competition. She was a winner of Astral Artists’ 2013 National Auditions and the S&R Foundation’s 2015 Washington Award, as both violinist and violist. Ms. Fang’s chamber music career began in her undergraduate days as founding first violin of the Chimeng Quartet, which won the Silver Medal at the 2010 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Chamber music has been central to her career ever since, and she has played in the Marlboro, Krzyzowa, Kronberg, Ravinia, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, ChamberFest West, Bard Music, Caramoor, Aspen, Music from Angel Fire, and Incontri in Terra di Luosha Fang violin, viola Arseniy Gusev piano Siena festivals. She has worked with such musicians as Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff, Steven Isserlis, Antoine Tamestit, Mitsuko Uchida, Nobuko Imai, Viviane Hagner, Claudio Bohórquez, Matthias Kirschnereit, Pamela Frank, Timothy Eddy, Gilbert Kalish, István Várdai, Akiko Suwanai, Andrei Ionita, Boris Giltburg, Peter Wiley, Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom, and members of the Guarneri and Juilliard string quartets. During 2021 and 2022, Ms. Fang was a violist of the Pavel Haas Quartet in Prague, with whom she recorded the Brahms String Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111 and Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34. She has performed at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, Kioi Hall in Tokyo, De Bijloke in Gent, the Graz and Vienna Musikvereins, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Meistersingerhalle in Nuremberg, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Muzikgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, the Flagey Piano Days in Brussels and the East Neuk Festival in Scotland.

Ms. Fang comes from a family of musicians. Her grandfather took violin lessons from the Alfred Wittenberg, a pupil of Joseph Joachim, who came with other Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to Shanghai in 1939. Under the guidance of her father, Fang made her debut at age eight in her native China with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3, and at sixteen moved to the USA on a scholarship to the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Ida Kavafian and Arnold Steinhardt. After graduating from Bard with degrees in violin and Russian Studies, she attended the Curtis Institute of Music as a violin student of Ida Kavafian and Shmuel Ashkenasi. At this time, she began viola studies with Steven Tenenbom, and in 2016 entered the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid as a viola student of Nobuko Imai. In the fall of 2019, she was invited to teach at the Bard College Conservatory of Music as an instructor of violin/viola. Always in pursuit of new artistic frontiers, Ms. Fang has also collaborated with the Almanac Dance Circus Theatre and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. She studied acting and theater at Bard College and the University of Pennsylvania. Fang plays on a Pietro Guarneri violin made in 1734 and a Dominique Peccatte bow kindly loaned by Dr. Ryuji Ueno. She plays on the ‘Josefowitz’ 1690 Andrea Guarneri viola.

Pianist and composer Arseniy Gusev was born in St. Petersburg in 1998 and has been studying music since age five. In 2015, he went to the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. In 2017, he graduated with honors from the Specialized Music School of the St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory and afterward studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory itself. In 2018, he moved to the US, in 2022, received his bachelor’s degree (as a pianist and composer) from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and in 2024, received his master’s degree in composition at Yale University. Since 2024, he has been pursuing a master’s degree in piano at the Juilliard School. Sergei Babayan, Keith Fitch, Chris Theofanidis, and David Lang are among his teachers.

He actively performs in the US and abroad, and has given solo concerts in Austria, Belgium, Italy, Slovakia, Russia, and Germany. His compositions are performed in Mariinsky Theater, Carnegie Hall, Konzerthaus Dortmund, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony Hall, and other major venues. He collaborated with such conductors as Arkady Steinluht, Dmitry Vasiliev, Robert Carter Austin, Alexander Titov, Ilya Derbilov, Mikhail Golikov, and Mikhail Mosenkov, and performed together with such musicians as Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Olga Kaler, and Anthony Roth Costanzo. Arseniy participated in master classes of Garrick Ohlsson, Samuel Adler, Andrew Norman, Joan Tower, Dmitry Bashkirov, Grigory Gruzman, Jerome Rose, Alexander Mndoyants, Nina Lelchuk, and others.

Arseniy is a laureate of many prestigious competitions, such as the Dorothy McKenzie Artist Award, Cleveland Piano Virtu(al)oso Competition, Singapore International Piano Competition, Three Arts Piano Competition, Cleveland Composers Guild Contest, “Another Space” Composition Competition, International Gavrilin Competition, International Competition “Performer-Composer”, and others.

“Newburyport Current” described his playing as “a blend of superb technical proficiency and lyrical romanticism seldom found in equal measure, especially in one so young.” “Petersburg Gazette” outlined Arseniy’s music as “melodic and cantabile”, “continuing the traditions of Russian school”.

Arseniy has an exclusive contract with “Kompozitor” publisher house. Among recently published works are 24 Postludes (2018) and 3 Toccatas (2020).

Host or Publisher Nicholas Roerich Museum