“Seattle Symphony Assistant Principal Cellist Nathan Chan is a 26-year-old musician recording his own videos, breaking his cello out of the classical world and onto YouTube, Instagram and TikTok,” writes Agueda Pacheco Flores in Tuesday’s (10/20) Cascade Public Media (Seattle, WA). “One second he’s ‘going rogue’ backstage at the Seattle Symphony, re-creating the two opening notes of Dr. Dre’s ‘Still D.R.E.’ Next he’s covering the theme song from this year’s videogame hit, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. His YouTube channel, where he posts new videos at least twice a month, has 48,000 subscribers…. Having just completed a virtual event with Emerald City Music, where he is an artist-in-residence this fall, Chan is set for his next concert [Oct. 29], playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the Seattle Symphony…. The musicians must take the Benaroya Hall stage spread at a safe distance … but Chan doesn’t mind. ‘Musicians are consistently making hundreds of micro-adjustments,’ he says, ‘so this does not faze me.’ ” Included is an interview in which Chan speaks about why he originally chose to play the cello, connecting with listeners online, and the ways that the pandemic has changed how people value arts and culture.
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