James Kang, viola, is a founding member of the Abeo Quartet, formed at Juilliard in 2018 and the first Graduate String Quartet Fellows at the University of Delaware under the tutelage of the Calidore String Quartet. As a member of Abeo, he has been featured in Alice Tully Hall, The Kennedy Center, Norway’s Vertavo Festival, on WQXR’s Midday Masterpieces, and CMS of Lincoln Center’s masterclass series.

As a soloist, James has won top prizes of the American Viola Society Solo Competition, the ASTA National Solo Competition and Atlanta Federation of Musicians Scholarship. In the spring of 2023, he performed Hindemith’s Der Schwanendreher Viola Concerto with the University of Delaware Symphony Orchestra. With Abeo, James most recently won the 3rd prize at the Bad Tölz International String Quartet Competition. Abeo is the winner of a 1st prize and the Audience Favorite Prize in the 2022 Yellow Springs Chamber Music Competition and Silver Medallists in the 2022 Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition and the 2019 Fischoff Competition. Abeo was a semi-finalist of the 2023 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition and of the 2022 Banff International String Quartet Competition, receiving the Anderson Career Development Prize. He has collaborated with musicians such as Itzhak Perlman, Shai Wosner, Joseph Kalichstein, and Donald Weilerstein.

James is also active in community outreach and has participated in engagement concerts including Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Meet the Music!, “If Music Be the Food,” United Nations Chamber Music Society, and MELODY(Music Enriching the Lives of Delaware Youth). In 2019, he taught young violists in Brazil as a guest faculty artist in partnership with Guri Santa Marcelina. He has attended summer programs such as Music@Menlo, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Perlman Music Program Chamber Workshop, Aspen Music Festival, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, and NYO-USA. James has served as Principal Violist for the Juilliard and Symphony in C orchestras, and performs as a guest violist with the Princeton Symphony.  James is currently pursuing his DMA studies at Northwestern University as the Teaching Assistant of Prof. Helen Callus. James is a graduate of The Juilliard School as a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship, and his teachers include Carol Rodland, Elias Goldstein, Jeremy Berry, and Marilyn Seelman.