Early life
Sarah Chang was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of Korean parents. Min-Soo Chang, her father, is a violinist, and Myoung Jun Chang, her mother, is a composer. Her parents had moved to the United States in 1979 so that Sarah's father could study for an advanced music degree at Temple University. Her mother was taking composition classes at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a younger brother named Michael.
Sarah liked to play one-finger melodies on the piano at the age of 3 but, possibly taking a cue from her father, asked her parents for a violin. She began practicing with a rented "1/16" violin at age 4 and auditioned for the Juilliard School at age 6 by playing the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor. She was admitted into the studio of the late Dorothy DeLay,[2] violin teacher to some of the world's great violinists including Itzhak Perlman, Midori Goto, Anne Akiko Meyers, Gil Shaham, Shlomo Mintz and many others, including Chang's father Min-Soo Chang. She was also taught by Hyo Kang, a former student and assistant of DeLay. She continued attending grade school in the Philadelphia area while studying music on Saturdays at Juilliard.
Chang was recognized as a child prodigy early on and when she was 8 was given the opportunity to audition with such names as Zubin Mehta and Riccardo Muti, who were working, respectively, with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Both gave her immediate engagements.
She recorded her first album, Debut, in 1991 at age 10;[3] it was released by EMI Classics August 18, 1992.[4] It quickly reached the Billboard chart of classical best-sellers. Her teacher in an interview claimed that no one had ever seen "anything like her".[citation needed
Career
She has collaborated with most major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Montréal Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the principal London orchestras, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam.
Among the conductors with whom she has worked are Mariss Jansons, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, Bernard Haitink, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, André Previn, Sir Simon Rattle, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson-Thomas, Placido Domingo, David Lockington and David Zinman.
Notable recital engagements have included her Carnegie Hall debut and performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Orchestra Hall in Chicago, Symphony Hall in Boston, the Barbican Centre in London, the Philharmonie in Berlin, as well as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
As a chamber musician, Chang has collaborated with such artists as Pinchas Zukerman, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yefim Bronfman, Martha Argerich, Leif Ove Andsnes, Stephen Kovacevich, Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, Lars Vogt, and the late Isaac Stern. She has made several chamber recordings with current and former members of the Berlin Philharmonic, including the Sextet and Piano Quintet of Dvorak and the Souvenir de Florence of Tchaikovsky.
She currently plays the 1717 Guarneri del Gesu violin,[5] which she purchased in her teens. She uses a variety of bows: Pajeot for Mozart and Bach; Sartory for "the big-whammy concertos, the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius"; and two Dominique Peccattes for other music.[5]
Along with Pete Sampras and Wynton Marsalis, she is a featured artist in watchmaker Movado's global advertising campaign "The Art of Time". For the June 2004 Olympics she was given the honor of running with the Olympic Torch in New York.[6] In 2005, Yale University dedicated a chair in Sprague Hall in Chang's name.