Sam Ou
Cello, Chamber Music
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Sam Ou came to the United States from Taiwan at age 4 and began his cello studies at age 9. He has been a pupil of several renowned cello teachers, including Gretchen Geber, Eleanore Schoenfeld, and Aldo Parisot. After completing his bachelor of arts and master of music degrees in New York from Columbia University and The Juilliard School in their double degree program, Ou moved to Boston to study with Laurence Lesser at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he graduated with a doctorate of musical arts.
Some awards and scholarships that Ou has won consist of the Rome Festival Concerto Soloist Award, the Rosemary Scales Prize for best cello concerto performance at the Kingsville International Young Performers Competition, the Chi-Mei Music Scholarship from Taiwan, the ARTS Level II Award from the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts, and the Joseph Schuster Memorial Cello Scholarship from the Young Musicians' Foundation.
Ou has performed in music festivals such as Tanglewood, Sarasota, Musicorda, Santa Fe, and La Jolla. He has been a visiting lecturer, performer, and cello teacher at Fu-Jen University in Taipei, Taiwan, where he conducted solo and chamber music master classes and performed with Fu-Jen faculty musicians. As a participant of Fu-Jen’s 18th Century Piano Literature Symposium and the International Strings Literature Symposium, he presented papers on the chamber music of Beethoven and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. Ou has also coached undergraduate chamber ensembles and orchestral cello sectionals at Tufts University.
Extremely fond of playing chamber music, Ou is currently a member of the Boston based Sage String Trio. While a student at NEC, he founded the NEC String Trio, which won the Honors Ensemble Competition at NEC, was featured on Boston’s WGBH radio, and was resident chamber ensemble at the Musicorda Music Festival. As a former member of the Huntington Piano Trio, Ou performed extensively throughout New England and traveled to Poland, giving concerts in Poznan and Zakopane. He has studied with several inspiring chamber music coaches including Toby Appel, Emanuel Ax, Neil Black, Earl Carlyss, Norman Fischer, Felix Galimir, Christoph Henkel, Lewis Kaplan, and Emma Tahmisian. He has also collaborated and performed with the Borromeo String Quartet, James Buswell, James Dunham, Patricia McCarty, Paul Neubauer, Heiichiro Ohyama, and Marcus Thompson. Recently, Ou performed Yehudi Wyner's Tanz and Maissele with Lucy Chapman, Bruce Creditor, and the composer at the piano in New York City's Center for Jewish History.
Ou is currently a faculty member at NEC’s Preparatory School. He also maintains a private teaching studio, and in the summer, he teaches in Belmont, MA at Music on the Hill, a chamber music program for young musicians.
B.A. (Columbia University), M.M. (Juilliard), D.M.A. (NEC); cello studies with Laurence Lesser, Aldo Parisot, Eleanore Schoenfeld, and Gretchen Geber; chamber music with Emanuel Ax, James Buswell, Earl Carlyss, Norman Fischer, Felix Galimir, Heiichiro Ohyama, and Lucy Chapman; master classes with Bernard Greenhouse, Lynn Harrell, Christoph Henkel, and Ronald Leonard.
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