Adrian Fung, Executive & Artistic Director

Recognized as one of Musical America’s 30 Innovators of the Year, Adrian Fung is an award-winning cellist, educator, and arts executive. Adrian has been Senior Vice President of The Royal Conservatory of Music, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Music at the University of Oklahoma, and Vice President of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Adrian created and launched both the undergraduate and graduate arts entrepreneurship program at University of Oklahoma, and the International Arts Incubator, an influential, professional seed-funding program. His work co-creating a new digital orchestra customized viewer with over 20 video angles for the Toronto Symphony reached over 14.5 million audience members and produced over 40 commissions for 50 partner orchestras. As artist and producer, his critically acclaimed projects have appeared in the Top 10 lists of CBC, Forbes, and Fortune magazines. He has been featured on CBC’s Q, The National, Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star.

As the founding cellist of the critically-acclaimed Afiara Quartet, Adrian is a winner of the Concert Artist Guild International Competition, Young Canadian Musicians Award, 2nd prizes at the Munich ARD and Banff International String Quartet Competitions, and the Szekely Prize for Best Interpretation of Beethoven. A JUNO-nominated artist and producer, his projects have been featured by Forbes and CBC Music in each of their Top 10 Albums of the Year and praised by the Toronto Star as “one of the most attention-grabbing shows of the year.” Adrian has performed over 600 performances in extensive tours worldwide including such storied stages as Carnegie Hall, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, and Kennedy Center.

As a soloist, he is winner of the Artists International Award and has given recitals around the world, including Carnegie Hall, Taiwan’s National Concert Hall, and San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, as well as appearing as soloist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has been acclaimed for his “virtuosic” playing (San Francisco Classical Voice), his “superb” and “brilliant” performance (New York Concert Review), and as a “consummate interpreter of the composer’s message” (Ontario Arts Review).

Adrian served as a jury member of the Eckhardt-Gramatte National Competition, ECM Generation National Award, and the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. He earned his Bachelor of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory, the Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, and an MBA from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. In addition, he was featured in Fortune magazine as one of the Best and Brightest Executive MBAs worldwide. Adrian’s cello teachers include Bonnie Hampton, Joel Krosnick, Fred Sherry, Antonio Lysy, David Hetherington, and Susan Gagnon. He plays on a cello made in 1787 by Benjamin Banks, on lifetime loan to him from an anonymous donor.