VIOLIN VIRTUOSO. After completing last year’s rigorous six-month audition process, 26-year-old Jun Iwasaki is the Oregon Symphony’s new concertmaster. Iwasaki is one of the youngest concertmasters at a major symphony orchestra and would one day like to teach. (Photo courtesy of the Oregon Symphony)

From The Asian Reporter, V19, #12 (March 24, 2009), page 13.

By Julie Stegeman

Jun Iwasaki is having a good year. In late January and early February, he completed his first solo performances as the Oregon Symphony’s new concertmaster to great reviews. A concert six weeks later showed a confident Iwasaki taking the stage to lead the orchestral tuning and play his violin with great élan, as though he’d been in the position for years.

At 26 years old, Iwasaki is one of the youngest concertmasters at a major symphony orchestra. He went through the Oregon Symphony’s rigorous audition procedure to be awarded the position, a process which took six months and included a weeklong "interview" where a handful of candidates were given a trial week with the orchestra. This allowed the orchestra to test musical and leadership skills as well as their ability to mesh with the rest of the orchestra, "kind of like ‘Concertmaster Idol,’" as Iwasaki described it. The weeklong audition, along with impressive academic credentials, earned him the position.

Iwasaki’s love of music did not begin in a vacuum; both parents are classical musicians. His father is a cellist — a teacher, soloist, and chamber musician — and his mother a pianist. His younger brother also was inspired by the family passion and majored in music.

"Growing up, it was always in my life, music was," Iwasaki said. He began his music career playing cello like his father, but after a few months switched to violin for reasons he doesn’t recall, beginning lessons at the age of five and never looking back.

Iwasaki was born in Japan, although his parents had been residing in the U.S. They decided to have their first-born child in Japan in order to be near family, and returned to the U.S. a few weeks after he arrived. He still retains his Japanese citizenship and tries to get back to Japan at least once a year or so.

He grew up in Bloomington, Illinois and moved to Dallas, Texas for his junior high and high school years. After high school, Iwasaki spent seven years at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), earning Bachelor and Master of Music degrees and completing the school’s very exclusive, one-year Concertmaster Academy. The program, which accepts at most one student per year, is taught by William Preucil, concertmaster for the Cleveland Orchestra and professor at CIM, and gives students great insight into the day-to-day responsibilities of a concertmaster. Iwasaki called CIM’s Concertmaster Academy program "one of the best musical and educational experiences I had."

In his spare time — which is limited due to practice, performances, and a busy travelling schedule — Iwasaki loves to cook, comparing the process to that of preparing music for a concert.

"You take all these ingredients and you do something to it and then you can present it to people," he said. "It’s a completely different thing than what it looks like at the beginning."

He is a big fan of the Food Network and also of Portland’s wonderful farmer’s markets. He enjoys sports, particularly basketball, although he hasn’t yet been able to make it to the Rose Garden for a game.

Iwasaki is also busy planning a wedding. He and his fiancée Grace Fong — a pianist— plan to wed this summer in California.

A very good year, indeed.

As for the future, Iwasaki wants to continue playing music and acting as concertmaster but would also like to begin teaching. His current schedule includes a lot of travelling — he is scheduled to play with several other orchestras in the U.S. and abroad — which he feels is too disruptive to the teaching process. Once his schedule settles down, he hopes to begin.

To learn more about Jun Iwasaki and upcoming Oregon Symphony performances, call (503) 228-1353 or visit <www.oregonsymphony.com>.