Jessica Hung
Violinist Jessica Hung was appointed Assistant Concertmaster of the Columbus Symphony in 2025. Previously she was a member of the Jacksonville Symphony. From 2008-2021, she served as Concertmaster of the Dayton Philharmonic and has also been Concertmaster of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, Principal Second Violin of the Sarasota Orchestra, Associate Concertmaster of the North Carolina Symphony, and Assistant Concertmaster of the Akron Symphony.
In her formative years, Jessica also performed as Concertmaster of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, and Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra. As a college/conservatory student, she gave her debut performances of the iconic violin solos in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade at age 18 and Capriccio espagnol at age 21. She has since performed as a substitute violinist for the major orchestras of Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Baltimore, and Milwaukee; Boston (as a Tanglewood Fellow); and various orchestras throughout Florida.
Jessica’s playing can be heard on three live-recorded albums with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and Artistic Director Neal Gittleman conducting, including a 2011 performance of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. In 2022, she was chosen as Concertmaster of the orchestra for Disney’s Harmonious Live!, a special performance of the EPCOT nighttime spectacular. She made her live television debut as a member of Disney’s Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra in 1998.
Jessica’s solo appearances include over two dozen subscription series performances with the Dayton Philharmonic, featuring concertos by Beethoven, Joseph Bologne, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Sean Neukom (world premiere in 2018), Florence Price, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Streaming broadcasts of concerts recorded live at the Schuster Performing Arts Center during her tenure can be heard on Discover Classical, Dayton’s public radio station. In addition, she has appeared as guest soloist with college and community orchestras across the Midwest.
As a chamber musician and arts administrator, Jessica served as both First Violinist of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra Principal String Quartet and Associate Artistic Director of Chamber Music for the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance, where she launched two experimental concert series: Project “Edge” throughout the 2017/18 season, encompassing 10 free community outreach performances in unconventional venues supported by a grant from the Miriam Rosenthal Foundation for the Arts; and “Summer Streams” in 2020, a series of live-streaming virtual chamber music concerts for the pandemic era, in conjunction with Dayton public television network ThinkTV. She has been part of Jacksonville Symphony Violin and Harp Duo with Principal Harp Kayo Ishimaru-Fleisher, the Florida Chamber Music Project, and the San Marco Chamber Music Society’s 2025 concert tour of Italy.
Jessica’s competition awards on the violin include winning Northwestern University’s Thaviu String Competition and a Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Scholarship. She was a finalist at the 1998 Chicago Symphony Orchestra Feinberg Youth Auditions with honorary adjudicator Pierre Boulez on the panel.
Jessica received a bachelor’s degree in violin performance with academic honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was a student of William Preucil and Stephen Rose. She began her undergraduate studies as a student of Gerardo Ribeiro at Northwestern University and decided to pursue a career as a leading orchestral violinist during her formative experiences in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, which she joined at age 14. She is also an alumna of the Midwest Young Artists Conservatory and the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, and toured Eastern Europe with the latter group in 1999, under the direction of Music Director Rossen Milanov, performing in his hometown of Sofia, Bulgaria.
Outside of her musical career, she holds a Master of Social Work degree from Widener University and has worked in the fields of hospice and mental health. Born in Kankakee, Illinois, to Taiwanese parents, Jessica grew up in the Chicago area and resides in Ohio with her husband Paul and daughter Aurora.