Yinuo Zhai, or Kevin, is a Chinese born cellist, who immigrated to the United States during 5th grade in 2016. His musical life started at the age of 5, where he played piano. He was never a “level” lover, as he never believed that the textbook levels, like Suzuki Books, does not reflect what kind of a player someone is.So instead, he participated in a city wide competition in Guangzhou, China, where he ranked fourth while competing under-aged compared to other contestants. At the age of 9, he had to move to another city, resulting in a drastic turn in his music life, where he switched from piano to cello. He did have a desire in violin, but due to personal health reasons, he was unfortunately turned down, and picked up the cello instead. His teacher, Yan Le, one of the best cello teachers in the area took him in and taught the best he could. Fortunately, he found his first steps into the cello, and started to build his momentum preceding cello. After immigration, he studied with Ruth Lane from the SF Opera, Robin Bonnell from Santa Rosa Symphony. Under the instruction of the two, he was able to improve exponentially that brought him into the Santa Rosa Youth Symphony and the Young People’s Chamber Orchestra in 7th grade, one of the youngest players at the time. In the meantime, he always performed cello with the Redwood Empire Chinese Association in their holiday celebrations like Chinese New Year, Moon Festival… During covid, he took another shift, and studied under Amos Yang from SF Symphony and Randolph Fromme from the SF Conservatory Pre-College. The two, through their own ways, helped him to get enrolled in the SF Conservatory’s Pre-College program, to which he had been rejected from before. In school, he went to Santa Rosa High where he was able to find music friends who supported him in establishing trio and string quartets, with one quartet being named Kevin and the Kevinettes. At pre-college, he joined the last year of Telegraph Quartet Instructed quartet, where he worked with Eric Chin, and Pei-ling Lin from the Telegraph Quartet that led him into the doors of chamber music, and with his quartet friends from pre-college, they performed in the program’s winter showcase, represented pre-college performing in Kronos Quartet 50 For the Future, awarding Bay-Area Creative Youth Award, and finally at their graduation from Pre-college. Currently, he studies under Jeremiah Shaw from Telegraph Quartet, while still participating in pre-college under instructions of Yeeun Heo and Dmitri Murrath from the Esme Quartet for string quartet, and Zakarias Grafilo from the Alexander Quartet for chamber orchestra.
You can find Yinuo’s 2024 Autumn Music Competition cello performance here.