Futen Wang, 17, is a junior at North Allegheny Senior High School. He started his viola studies at age 8 and has been studying with Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra violist Marylène Gingras-Roy since 2013. He is the winner of the Pittsburgh Civic Orchestra Youth Concerto Competition 2018-2019 and was featured during their recent concert in March. He is passionate about chamber music and has been a violist of various string quartets for three years. His current group, the Vivo String Quartet, won the 2018-19 Montgomery Fellowship Scholarship sponsored by Chamber Music Pittsburgh. Futen is the principal violist of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, the North Allegheny Honors Chamber Orchestra, and a line leader for the North Allegheny Golden Strolling Strings. He was also a member of the Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestra and the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association’s Honors Orchestra, serving as principal in both.
Futen began his piano studies with Sung-Im Kim at age 6 in the Carnegie Mellon University Music Preparatory School and performed at Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall when he was eight. Becoming a pupil of Dr. Marina Lupinacci’s piano studio in 2013, Futen was a piano duo winner (with his brother, Yosen Wang) of the Pittsburgh Concert Society Young Artists competition in 2017. In addition, he won first prize in the Pittsburgh Piano Teachers Association Duet Competition in 2015 and the Steinway Society of Western Pennsylvania Young Artist awards in 2014, 2015, and 2016.
Futen has great interests in technology and engineering and was the first-place winner of the Pittsburgh Regional Science and Engineering Fair in 2014. He also received the Excellence in Engineering Scholarship from the University of Pittsburgh, Center for Energy during the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science 2019 Competition. Futen enjoys scenic photography and was selected into the Allegheny Intermediate Unit’s photography apprenticeship program in 2018. He also enjoys carpentry and dreams to own a luthier shop someday.
To him, playing in Vivo has sparked a life-long interest in classical music and has inspired Futen to pursue music throughout the rest of his life. Whether as a solo or in a large group, the intimacy of chamber music has broadened his perspective of music as a whole and will stay with him for years to come.
