Violist Ao Peng won 2nd prize at the 47th Hudson Valley String Competition in 2019, and was winner of the concerto competition at the Music Academy of the West in 2016.

He toured across South Korea with Richard O’Neill, Yu-Chien Tseng, Daniel Chong, and Steven Lin as a member of Ensemble DITTO. He was also a member of the New York Philharmonic Global Academy and co-principal at the Juilliard Orchestra. Peng served as associate principal viola in the New York String Orchestra Seminar from 2014 to 2015. He appeared in the album “On & Between” which won the gold medal at the Global Music Awards, along with “Best of Show,” “Best Album,” and “Best Instrumentalists” in 2018.

Peng was invited to music festivals including the Marlboro Music Festival, Melon Music, Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Kneisel Hall, Music Academy of the West, and Bowdoin Festival. He performed with renowned artists, including Itzhak Perlman, Cho-Liang Lin, David Geber, Richard O’Neill, Elmira Darvarova, Milan Milisavljevic, Liang Wang, Merry Peckham, and Howard Hall.

Born in Qinhuangdao, China, Peng began playing the violin when he was five and switched to viola at fourteen. He has a bachelor’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and obtained his master’s degree from The Juilliard School. He studied with Karen Dreyfus, Kazuhide Isomura, and Samuel Rhodes. Peng is a faculty member at Sun Yat-Sen University (中山大学) in Guangzhou, China.