Qian Zhou was born in Hang Zhou, China. She started violin lessons with her father at the age of five. She made her public début recital at the People's Stadium of her native city at the age of seven. At the age of eight she entered the Shanghai Conservatory, where she studied the violin with Professors Wang Ren-yi, Tan Shu-zhong, and Zhou Bin-you. In 1984, after winning first prize in the National Competition of China, she performed overseas for the first time, in Japan and Poland. The next year she went to the U.S.A. to study with Berl Senofsky at the Peabody Conservatory, where she graduated with the Artist Diploma and was also active as a teacher.
In 1987, eighteen-year-old Qian Zhou introduced herself to the world of music with a brilliant triumph at the Marguerite Long/Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris, one of the four major international events of the kind. She broke all precedent in the competition's fifty-year history by winning not only the First Grand Prize, but also the Best Mozart, the Recital, and the Virtuoso Prizes, as well as the International Artist and Audience Prizes. She was the youngest Long/ Thibaud winner ever, and her victory drew worldwide attention. She has appeared in two documentary films, one of them Isaac Stern's Oscar-winning "From Mao To Mozart".
Since then, Qian Zhou has been in the first rank of world-class violinists of her generation. She is a frequent recitalist and soloist with orchestras in Europe, America, Asia, and Africa, and her artistry has been widely recognized by the news media, and by critics such as
September 2001
