Cindy Lan
"I don't think I've ever been to a performance before where I've both felt so deeply what you were emoting while also feeling insanely seen for my own feelings & experiences. There was a sense that the room as a whole was experiencing something similar." -Audience Member for 'Breath & Bow Meditations'
Cindy Lan is a performer (viola & violin) and composer from unceded Munsee Lenape and Canarsie land otherwise known as Queens, NY. She began studying the violin under her mother’s tutelage at the age of 7. From an early age, she has been involved with multidisciplinary, collaborative creative endeavors, including: performing with TADA! Youth Theater through middle school, attending LaGuardia High School where she held principal positions in orchestras and performed with the New Music Ensemble, countless hours of chamber music at Skidmore College, being a member of the band EMDR, playing regularly with Musica Nova (conducted by Brad Lubman of Ensemble Signal) at the Eastman School of Music, and attending music festivals such as New Music On the Point where she worked closely with composers and performers such as Caroline Shaw, JACK Quartet, Tony Arnold, and Miya Masaoka.
At the Eastman School of Music, she completed her Master’s degree with George Taylor. She is a pedagogue with a decade of experience and is constantly learning from her students. She is the co-principal violist and Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Orchestra, and an avid chamber musician. She is the recipient of a 2023 Queens Art Fund grant for a New Work composition, and has appeared as a viola soloist with Orchestra Northern Arizona. Today, she enjoys expanding her strings family with cello studies, working on multi-genre recording projects, and making art with her husband, Raphael Galvis.