“I was really enthusiastic about the violin from when I was practically born,” Chad Hoopes said in a 2012 interview with Classical MPR, where he was completing his tenure as the network’s 2011–12 artist-in-residence. When he was three years old, he’d attended a Minnesota Orchestra concert that featured a young violin soloist, and he “was absolutely taken by her performance,” he explained, adding: “[F]rom that moment on, I decided that I wanted to be a violinist and that’s what I was going to do.”
Hoopes, who was born in 1994, acted on that decision immediately, begging for a violin and eventually taking lessons in Minneapolis. In 2007, he enrolled in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Young Artist Program, and the following year, at age 13, he won first prize in the Junior Division of the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists in Cardiff, Wales, which set the stage for the world-class career he’d go on to build for himself.
Soon after graduating from high school, in Cleveland, Hoopes headed to Germany, where from 2013 to 2015 he studied with Ana Chumachenco at the Kronberg Academy. In a 2021 cover story for The Strad, Hoopes talked about how that decision reflected his desire to break out of his comfort zone and pursue unconventional choices. “I could have gone to Juilliard or Curtis or another of the American schools,” he said, “but I wanted to experience a different culture and a different tradition. Not necessarily better, but just a different perspective.”
In 2014, when he was19 years old and still a student at the Kronberg Academy, Hoopes made a major career move by releasing his first album, which featured performances of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and John Adams’s Violin Concerto with the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kristjan Järvi. The New York Times praised the album, calling it “impressive.” They also noted that Hoopes was “prodigiously talented” and added: “There’s balance, too, in the choice of repertory here: Mendelssohn’s evergreen concerto in an urgent, passionate rendition, and that of John Adams, showing off Mr. Hoopes’s enormous stamina and brilliant, zippy sound.”
Over the years, Hoopes has performed with many of the world’s leading ensembles, including the Houston, National, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras; and the Orchestre de Paris, among others. He’s given recitals on Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series and at such prestigious venues as the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Tonhalle in Zurich; he’s also become a frequent performer with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and he often appears at the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, Switzerland. His honors include the 2011 Audience Award at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the 2013 Cleveland Arts Prize for Emerging Artists, and a 2017 Avery Fisher Career Grant.
This summer, Hoopes—who made his Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival debut in 2023—returns for three performances, with the centerpiece being nothing less than a highly anticipated recital with the acclaimed pianist Katia Skanavi on Tuesday, August 12. The duo combines forces for two major works: Brahms’s gorgeous Sonata in A Major, Op. 100, and Beethoven’s groundbreaking and jaw-droppingly virtuosic Kreutzer Sonata. Earlier in the week, on Sunday, August 10, Hoopes joins violinist Ida Kavafian, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, cellist Eric Kim, and the Escher String Quartet for Enescu’s stunning Octet, which the composer wrote when he was a teenager, and to close out his appearances (as well as week 5 of the Festival), Hoopes pairs up with Dover Quartet violinist Bryan Lee on Saturday, August 16, to perform one of the most cherished works in the entire violin repertoire: the inimitable “Bach Double.”
Tickets for the Festival’s 2025 season are on sale now. Explore our 2025 calendar here, and purchase your tickets either online or through our Ticket Office at 505-982-1890 or tickets@sfcmf.org.