Emlyn Ngai

Education

GPD, The Hartt School, University of Hartford

MM, Oberlin College Conservatory

BM, McGill University

Licentiate, Royal Schools of Music

Emlyn Ngai enjoys a diverse life as both a modern and historical violinist. In addition to being associate concertmaster of the Carmel Bach Festival and director of the festival’s Circle of Strings, Emlyn is a member of the Adaskin String Trio with which he has performed extensively across Canada and the United States and has been recorded for broadcast by CBC Radio, Radio-Canada, and National Public Radio. As concertmaster of Tempesta di Mare, the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, he has performed across the US and in Europe, and has made eight releases on the British label Chandos. Tempesta’s recordings and live performance broadcasts are distributed nationally through NPR and internationally via the European Broadcasting Union. His association with such early music groups as Apollo’s Fire, Boston Baroque and Joshua Rifkin’s Bach Ensemble has taken him to Bermuda, Germany, Spain, and the UK as well as across the US. Recording credits include Centaur, MSR Classics, New World Records, and Telarc. His recordings for the label Musica Omnia have received acclaim in American Record Guide, BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, and The Strad. Emlyn holds degrees from McGill University, Oberlin College Conservatory, and the Hartt School. His teachers have included Frona Colquhoun, Sydney Humphreys, Thomas Williams, Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer. It was during his studies with Marilyn McDonald at Oberlin that he won first prize on baroque violin in the 1995 Locatelli Concours Amsterdam and appeared at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo with Ensemble Il Giardino Armonico and the Berliner Tage für Alte Musik.

An enthusiastic educator, Emlyn has taught at Boston University, Mount Holyoke College, and McGill University and has been a faculty member of Amherst Early Music, Madison Early Music Festival and the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. Currently he teaches modern and baroque violin, chamber music and performance practice at The Hartt School, where he also co-directs the Collegium Musicum.