Eighteen-year-old cellist Nathan Chan demonstrated his talent for music at an early age. Before he was two, he could mimic the styles of conductors he saw on music videos. As a toddler, his imitations were so intuitively musical that he caught the attention of San Francisco Opera Assistant Conductor Sara Jobin. Under her eye, he made his debut as a conductor at age three, leading the San Jose Chamber Orchestra in a set of Mozart variations. This was followed by a guest appearance with the Palo Alto Philharmonic a year later, conducting Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. At five, he began formal music lessons with cellist Irene Sharp.
Nathan Chan has performed as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the UK Northern Sinfonia, and the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra. He has performed for the Vancouver Recital Society, the Great Eastern International Kids Festival “Prodigies of the World” concert in Singapore, and the Emmy-award winning national radio program From The Top. Mr. Chan has performed benefit concerts for causes such as global warming, the American Alzheimer Association, Friends of Children with Special Needs (autism), and the Foundation for the Fine & Performing Arts. For his contributions to the community, he won the Peninsula Arts Council’s Ray Lorenzato Diamond Arts Award in 2007.
In 2006, Nathan Chan appeared in The Music in Me, a documentary that aired on the HBO network and won the Peabody Award. This program led to a performance in Carnegie Hall and caught the attention of singer Roberta Flack, who invited Mr. Chan to collaborate on her project of Beatles songs for Sony Records. In 2008, he performed at the Museum of Music Making in San Diego at a gala honoring sitar legend Ravi Shankar. Mr. Chan was recently featured in The World’s Greatest Musical Prodigies, a three-part British series documenting a global search for talented musicians under the age of fifteen. In April 2009, Mr. Chan and three other performers gave the world premiere of the Velesslavista Quadruple Concerto, composed for the series by Alexander Prior. In 2009, he played a Fourth of July fireworks concert with the San Francisco Symphony at the Shoreline Amphitheatre and soloed with the Orchestra for their Concerts for Kids series. In 2010, Chan was the winner of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition.
Chan has played concerts around the world at places like London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vancouver. Last year, he was the Debut Artist with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and also played with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, soloing and premiering a new work by Alexander Prior.
Besides the cello, Nathan Chan plays saxophone, piano, and electric cello. He enjoys table tennis, badminton, filmmaking, and social media. He is currently a freshman attending the Columbia University-Juilliard School Exchange. Chan now studies with Richard Aaron at Juilliard in New York City.
Nathan Chan