Interview with Emad Zolfaghari, Winner of the 2024 Primrose Competition

June 28, 2024, 2:23 PM · Violist Emad Zolfaghari - who just won this year's prestigious Primrose International Viola Competition at the Colburn School - defies every story you've ever heard about having to start the instrument as a toddler in order to achieve excellence.

Zolfaghari, who is 19, didn't start playing the viola (or violin, for that matter) until he was 10 years old, in his public school music program in suburban Detroit. And he didn't start private lessons until age 12.

Violist Emad Zolfaghari. Photo by Micah Gleason.

In fact, had you met him pre-viola, you might not think he was destined to be a musician. Born in Windsor, Canada, Zolfaghari's family moved to Michigan when he was two. When he was four, his mother started him and his three siblings on group piano lessons. While he did continue taking private piano lessons, his reaction remained tepid, at best. "I played piano a little bit, but it was never serious," Zolfaghari told me in a phone interview this week. "I wouldn't practice much - it was just something I did."

And then - the viola.

It started when he saw his older brother playing cello in the school orchestra at Beverly Elementary School. In the fifth grade, the school gave students the option to choose a musical instrument. Zolfaghari was in the fourth grade at the time.

"My older brother was playing cello in the orchestra, and I would see him practice," Zolfaghari said. "I begged my parents for lessons for the entire year, but they told me I had to wait until I was old enough for the school program. So when the school program finally allowed me to play string instrument, I chose the viola."

Why exactly the viola?

"I think it was the sound," Zolfaghari said. "My brother was already playing the cello, and I wanted a middle voice that was different from his. My elementary school teacher brought in some professionals to play quartet music, and I fell in love with the music and the sound of the viola."

In fact, it hit him like a lightning bolt.

"I just knew, two weeks after picking up the viola, that that's what I wanted to do," Zolfaghari said. He apparently showed both great interest and talent - after just a few weeks in the school orchestra program, his strings teacher approached him. "She said, 'Emad, I think you could become a professional, if you actually tried, and if you're actually passionate about this.' Since then, I just knew."

"I was obsessed with it," Zolfaghari said. "I would watch so many YouTube videos - I was dying to learn how to do vibrato and how to get a good sound. I loved it so much."

He also had a lot of encouragement from his orchestra teachers. "An hour before school started, I'd always go to the orchestra room to practice and get help from my orchestra teachers," he said. That was before he found a private teacher.

About a year and a half later, when he was 12 years old, he connected with his first viola teacher, Shanda Lowery-Sachs. Shanda was a violist who had played in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra since 2001. Last fall she passed away at age 51, after a long battle with cancer.

"She was my first real viola teacher, and she taught me so much," Zolfaghari said. "One of the first things I thought, after I was awarded the prize, was how proud she would be of me, and how far I have come. She was so supportive and really believed in me. I was in contact with her up until she passed, and I really miss her."

Zolfaghari studied with Lowery-Sachs for two and a half years, until the family moved to Toronto. At that point, Lowery-Sachs convinced one of her good friends, Theresa Rudolph - who was not planning to take any new students - to take Zolfaghari as a student. "So Theresa Rudolph was my main teacher through my most formative years - through my high school years."

Rudolph did a number of things that helped Zolfaghari reach that higher level he was striving for. First, she convinced the director of The Taylor Academy at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto to accept Zolfaghari as a student, even though they didn't officially have a viola program.

"They let me in, and I played in chamber orchestra and played chamber music," Zolfaghari said. "It motivated me so much, to be in that program, and to be with such high-level musicians."

In the summer after his ninth-grade year, Rudolph encouraged Zolfaghari to go to Morningside Music Bridge, a summer program in Boston for gifted high school musicians from around the world.

"At that time, Teng Li was the artistic director," Zolfaghari said, and so he studied with her. The program brings together teachers from major music schools across the United States, "so I met all these teachers," he said. "That festival is where I met my current teacher, Hsin-Yun Huang. I remember playing for her, and she told me, 'You should audition for Curtis one day, I really think you could make it.'

That lit a fire for Zolfaghari. With that encouragement, "I worked really hard," he said. "When I was 16, I auditioned to Curtis - and I was accepted."

Of course, this was a tough sell for the family - leaving for the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at the age of 16.

"I was so determined to go there early, I took summer school to finish high school early," Zolfaghari said. "I was so excited. I begged my parents to let me go, and they finally let me go, even though they really wanted me to stay home."

That was three years ago, and since then he has been at Curtis, studying with violist Hsin-Yun Huang. "She has been so supportive, taking me as a student at Curtis at 16, even though I wasn't established yet. She saw something in me and agreed to take me. I'm really grateful to her.

BELOW: Zolfaghari performs in the quarter-finals of the Primrose competition: Hindemith's Viola Sonata, Op. 25, No. 1; Jessie Montgomery's Rhapsody No. 1; and Kreisler's Midnight Bells from Heuberger’s "Der Opernball."

Zolfaghari has also been representing the school actively. In May 2023, he served as principal viola for the Curtis Symphony Orchestra during its West Coast Tour, and earlier this year he toured with Curtis on Tour, performing in chamber concerts that included a combination of students and professionals, including Curtis alumnus and professor Benjamin Beilman.

For the Primrose competition, Zolfaghari did have a problem to solve: What instrument to use?

"About a month before the competition, I had tried a few nice, old instruments, but they were just too small, or just didn't fit," Zolfaghari said. "So I had decided I would just play on my own instrument, and I would just make the best of it." He has a 2018 viola made by Denis Cormier of Montreal.

"A month before the competition, I went to Christophe Landon's shop in New York," Zolfaghari said. At that point, he was no longer looking for a viola to play in the competition; instead, "I was looking for a certain model chinrest that they had, that no other shop had. So I took the bus to New York to get that chinrest."

"I have a really long neck, and I've always been more comfortable playing with a chinrest that is over the tailpiece. I was trying a higher chinrest called the 'SAS chinrest,' but it was so high that (my chin) would fall off of it. Also, I didn't have much movement - it just made me more stiff."

The chinrest he was in search of was made by Boris Sverdlik. "I even contacted the maker, and he doesn't make them anymore!" Zolfaghari said. "I've been looking for it for years. It goes over the side and the tail piece of the instrument, so it covers a wide area, allowing your jaw to be rested and your chin to be rested, all on the the same flat plane. That allows a lot of range of movement, if you want to tilt your head one way or the other. It's comfortable and stable. I'd been looking for that chinrest for a while, and it just so happened that Christophe Landon had some of them."

At the shop, Zolfaghari started playing, so he could try the chinrest. That's when Landon stopped him. "Wait a minute, you can't be playing on this instrument for the competition," Landon said. "You need something really amazing if you're going to the Primrose competition."

Landon took out a half-dozen violas for Zolfaghari to try, all old Italian instruments from notable makers. "They were incredible," Zolfaghari said. Then he tried a 1719 Carlo Bergonzi viola.

"When I picked up that Bergonzi viola, it was really something else," Zolfaghari said. "I connected with it in a way that was so different from any instrument I'd ever played. I knew I could do something really powerful with this instrument. And so he generously agreed to let me take it for the competition."

"I'm so grateful that he was able to lend me that instrument," Zolfaghari said. "It made such a difference."

Violist Emad Zolfashari, performing at the 2024 Primrose International Viola Competition at the Colburn School. Photo by Greg Grudt/Mathew Imaging.

"I had just met him for the very first time that day," Zolfaghari said. "I walked in looking for chinrest, and I walked out with that priceless Bergonzi viola - it was just incredible."

And since all the violists will want to know - how big was that viola? "It's just a little under 16 and a half inches," Zolfaghari said. "I have really long arms, so I can play a bigger viola - up to 17 inches. But I think it's more practical not to play a huge one. I had been playing on a school instrument that was quite a lot over 17 inches. I was playing some Paganini on it, and it was not ideal."

Zolfaghari said that he enjoyed the competition experience. "I enjoyed the camaraderie between all the competitors," he said. "A lot of people stayed throughout the whole week, even if they didn't advance in the competition, and we all hung out together. We'd have meals together, and I even went to the beach a couple of times. It was like a family, we were all supporting each other. It was just a really nice experience."

What is next for Zolfaghari?

"As of now, I’m just seeing where the world takes me!" he said. "Since I started playing the viola late, my initial dream was just to be a professional violist in any orchestra. Now that I’ve started doing competitions, taking part in professional chamber music festivals, performing recitals and playing as a soloist with orchestras, I am realizing what might be possible for me. I really look up to my teacher, Hsin-Yun Huang, and I dream of doing what she does one day - performing, teaching, and playing chamber music. It seems like such a fulfilling life."

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Replies

Susan Agrawal

June 28, 2024 at 10:41 PM · We love Emad! Not just a great player, but a kind and humble person, sensitive collaborator, and even on his way to being an excellent teacher according to my 14yo! He has such a bright future.

jean dubuisson

June 29, 2024 at 08:51 AM · That is such a beautiful story!

Christian Lesniak

June 29, 2024 at 11:41 PM · I still haven't really grasped the Bartok Viola Concerto, but Emad's wide spectrum of tones and articulations makes for a really fascinating listen

Jeremy Morris

July 1, 2024 at 12:33 PM · My aunt had been at the RAM in the 1930s, but abandoned her violin studies to help support her family during the depression. She kept her instrument however and when I was 10, she gave it to me and I began private lessons. I took to it and progressed, joining various student and amateur orchestras. When I left the regular army (I had been a tank commander) I became a teacher of French/German and resumed playing. At one of the schools where I worked, there was an orchestra, but no-one played the viola although there was an instrument in the store cupboard. I volunteered to fill the gap and that was when I went over to "the dark side". Thirty years later, now retired, I still play regularly with one of the Edinburgh orchestras and love it!

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Interview with Emad Zolfaghari, Winner of the 2024 Primrose Competition

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