Philippe Chao enjoys a wide-ranging career as an orchestral, solo and collaborative performer as well as a respected teacher and coach. 

Appointed as Acting Assistant Principal Violist of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, he also performs as Principal Violist with The Post-Classical Ensemble and as an extra musician with the National, Detroit, and Baltimore Symphonies. He spends his summers as a longstanding member of the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson, Wyoming. 

As a chamber musician and recitalist, he has performed throughout the Washington DC region with numerous organizations including Musica Aperta, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, the Ibis Chamber Music Society, the Chamber Music Series at the United States Holocaust Museum, the Alden Theater Recital Series, the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, and the Czech and Ukrainian Embassies’ series. Other appearances have included performances at the Supreme Court, the Garth Newell Music Center, Music Mountain, and Oxford University, UK with the Coull String Quartet. He performed on Broadway last season in Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Tony-nominated musical, Bright Star. 

As a concerto soloist, Philippe has appeared with the Newark Symphony Orchestra, the National Repertory Orchestra, the Virginia Symphony, and the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra and has appeared as the featured soloist with the Fairfax Choral Society at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. 

Philippe is an adjunct professor at The George Mason University School of Music, Washington Adventist University, and The Catholic University of America’s Benjamin T. Rome School of Music. He coaches orchestral sectionals at Georgetown University and has been a coach for the DC Youth Orchestra Program and a faculty member of the American Festival for the Arts, the Eastern Music Festival, Montgomery College, and the Ovations Summer String Academy. He was a guest artist-teacher for the State Department’s Artist Exchange Program at the Kennedy Center in 2007 and has served as an adjudicator for the Catholic University Young Musicians’ Competition, the Asian American Music Society’s annual String Competition, and the Dorothy Farnham Feuer Memorial Scholarship Competition. 

Earning degrees from the University of Minnesota and the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, Mr. Chao also studied at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in Aldeborough, England and at the Cleveland Institute of Music. His mentors include renowned pedagogues Roland and Almita Vamos, the Boston Symphony’s Michael Zaretsky, international recording artist and soloist Gérard Caussé, William Primrose protegé Donald McInnes, and the Cleveland Orchestra’s former Principal Violist, Robert Vernon. 

Philippe is sponsored by D’addario.