Philadelphia Orchestra Appoints Four New String Players

Tobias Vigneau will serve as assistant principal bass, and John Bian, Eliot Heaton, and MuChen Hsieh will join the second violin section

Announced alongside its Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra (PO) has welcomed double bassist Tobias Vigneau, and violinists John Bian, Eliot Heaton, and MuChen Hsieh to the orchestra. 

Vigneau will join the PO in September 2024 as the new assistant principal bass; Bian, Heaton, and Hsieh began performing in the orchestra’s second violin section in July 2024. 

Born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Vigneau began learning the violin at age five and started the double bass at age 10. A recent graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with former PO Principal Bass Harold Robinson and Edgar Meyer, he has performed with the Montreal Symphony, the Santa Fe Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra, the Santa Fe Symphony, Symphony in C, and the New Mexico Philharmonic. 

Additionally, Vigneau has been a Marlboro Music Festival double bass fellow and won first prize at the 2018 Jackie McGehee Young Artist’s Competition, and was named Senior Division Winner of the 2023 Santa Fe Symphony Concerto Competition.

Bian was a member of the Milwaukee Symphony beginning in 2018, and began serving as its assistant principal second violin in 2022. As a substitute violin, he has performed with the Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, St. Louis, and Detroit symphonies. He is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, the University of Michigan, and Boston University, where he was the grand prize winner of both the Solo Bach Competition in 2012 and the Concerto Competition in 2014. Among his mentors included David Halen, Yoonshin Song, and Yuri Mazurkevich. 

Heaton previously served as concertmaster of the Detroit Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, and Saginaw Bay Symphony, and has been guest concertmaster with the Chautauqua, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Fort Wayne, and Terre Haute symphonies, in addition to playing with the Detroit and Pittsburgh symphonies. A graduate of the Oberlin College and Conservatory and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, his primary violin teachers included Marilyn McDonald, Kevork Mardirossian, Linda Case, and Jan Butler. 

Hsieh served as principal second violin of the Houston Symphony from 2017 to 2024. She has collaborated with James Dunham, Eric Halen, Jon Kimura Parker, Cho-Liang Lin, Mark Nuccio, Gil Shaham, and Kathleen Winkler, plus given performances at the Grand Teton Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West. She studied with Kathleen Winkler at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and with Malcolm Lowe and Masuko Ushioda at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music. 

“We are thrilled to welcome these four exceptional musicians to The Philadelphia Orchestra family,” Nézet-Séguin said in the press release. “Each brings a unique perspective and rich experience to their craft, and I look forward to collaborating with them and witnessing their contributions to the Orchestra and our community for many years to come.”