Qing Hou has been a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1997. Before joining the Chicago Symphony, she was a member of the San Francisco Symphony.
An avid chamber musician, she has performed at the Manchester Music Festival, Music in the Vineyards, El Paso Pro Musica, ChamberFest Brown County, Token Creek Chamber Music Festival and Chamber Music Quad Cities. She has performed with Mistral Music (Boston) for many years. Chamber music collaborators have included artists such as Pinchas Zukerman, Daniel Barenboim and Yefim Bronfman. Hou has toured Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and Luxembourg with musicians from the German Radio Philharmonie Orchestra Saarbrücken.
In 1997, Hou founded the Lincoln String Quartet with three other CSO colleagues (including her sister, violinist Lei Hou, and violist Lawrence Neuman, who is now her husband). The quartet has been featured many times in performances at the Northwestern University Winter Chamber Music Festival, on WFMT radio, and at venues all around Chicago. In addition, the quartet has performed in Santiago, Chile, as part of the Beethoven Foundation concert series.
As a soloist, Qing Hou has appeared with orchestras in Boston, Baltimore, Chicago and China. In the fall of 2003, she made her debut as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim.
A native of China, Hou studied at the Central Conservatory in Beijing before coming to the United States in 1988 to continue her studies. She holds degrees from the Peabody Conservatory and the New England Conservatory. Hou is an artist-faculty member at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.
