Chau Cheung is Music Director of the Statesboro-Georgia Southern Symphony and assistant professor at Georgia Southern Univers

Chau Cheung is Music Director of the Statesboro-Georgia Southern Symphony and assistant professor at Georgia Southern University. As music director, Mr. Chau leads the Statesboro Georgia Southern Symphony in a series of masterworks, youth, family, and pops concerts. Mr. Chau is a frequent guest conductor in Europe and Asia and has conducted orchestras including the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gavle Symphony Orchestra and Sibelius Academy Orchestra, among others. In Poland, Mr Chau conducted the Filharmonia Swietokrzyska in Kielce, Wieniawski Filharmonic in Lublin and Filharmonia Sudecka. Mr. Chau will also conduct the Bialystok and Slaska Philharmonic Orchestras in Poland in 2005 and 2006.

In 2004, Edo de Waart invited Mr. Chau to be assistant conductor for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra for the Maestro s inaugural season as music director. As ambassador for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s educational program Blossom With Music, Mr. Chau led the orchestra on numerous occasions performing for more than 40,000 students from schools all over Hong Kong. Mr. Chau also presented repertoire highlights for the Philharmonic s next concert season, and will continue his role as assistant conductor in the coming season.

Mr. Chau s care for the musical growth of young people led him to establish and become music director of Sinfonietta Polonia in Poland. The orchestra is comprised of young musicians from music academies in Poland and Germany. Professional musicians from various Polish philharmonic orchestras - Poznan, Sudecka and Kalisz, as well as professors from the Poznan Music Academy who play in the orchestra, and share the vision and the responsibility of guiding young musicians toward a high standard of orchestral performance. Though in its first season (2004-05), the orchestra performed in the Mozart Festival in Poznan, the National Museum and the St. Franciscan Church in the same city, as well as at the inauguration of the Wieniawski Festival in Szczawno Zdroj. . The orchestra recorded

live for Ostrow Television and Poznan Radio. Sinfonietta Polonia premiered John Rutter s Requiem in Poznan and gave the world premiere of Zrodlo, a composition by German-American composer Ralf Gawlick, written in honor of John Pope II and based on the latter s poem. Concerts of Sinfonietta Polonia met with enthusiastic audiences and critical acclaim. The Glos Wielkopolski described the orchestra as having priceless enthusiasm, and already with considerable abilities , and continued that In Hebrides Overture and also in the bravura interpretation of Beethoven s 1st Symphony, the talented and very capable conductor Chau Cheung from USA was able to get from the young zealots a lot of good symphonic playing and considerable ability of ensemble collaboration . Gazeta Wyborcza from Poznan contended, Will Sinfonietta Polonia become a very good or an exceptional ensemble?

As cellist, Mr. Chau is currently a member of the Atma Piano Trio, with violinist/wife Blanka Bednarz and pianist Slawomir Dobrzanski. The ensemble performed in Germany, Sweden and the US, and toured in Poland. Their concerts met with high acclaim and several audience attendance records were broken. Concerts with Atma Trio this season include appearances at the Mozart Festival in Poznan, Poland, the Music Gettysburg! Series in Pennsylvania, and at Lawrence University, Wisconsin. Mr. Chau was formerly a member of the Huntington Piano Trio, which performed, among others, at Carnegie Hall s Weill Recital Hall, the Lake Placid Center for Performing Arts and WGBH live concerts in Boston as well as broadcasts.

Mr. Chau began cello lessons at age seven and received top prices at the Hong Kong Schools Music Festival, including first prize at the Commercial Radio Prize Competition at age twelve the youngest musician ever to receive this prize. At fourteen, Mr. Chau was invited to perform as soloist, playing Tchaikovsky s Rococo Variations, with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. The Sing Dao Daily described him as a rare gem in the musical field . Mr. Chau was a full scholarship recipient from the R.D.Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, the Harid Conservatory and also the Yale School of Music. He is also completing his double doctorate in conducting and cello performance at the New England Conservatory in Boston the first double doctorate candidate in the Conservatory s

history. His cello teachers include Eleonore Schoenfeld, Aldo Parisot, Colin Carr and Johanne Perron, and participated in conducting master classes with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Valery Gergiev, David Zinman, Alan Gilbert, Murry Sidlin and Mariusz Smolij.

Cheung Chau studied conducting with the world-renowned Finnish conductor and pedagogue, Jorma Panula.

His other conducting teachers include the Polish conductor Joseph Wilkomirski and Frank Battisti. Mr. Chau served as music director of the Bethany College/Community Orchestra and the Phillips Exeter Academy String Orchestra in the United States. He was cello faculty at Bethany College, chamber music faculty at New England Conservatory Preparatory School in Boston from 1999 2001 and also director of the chamber music program at Phillips Exeter

Academy, 1999-2001.