Vera Tsu Weiling

Among Tsu Weiling's pupils are Renchao Yu (2018 Zarin Mehta Fellow), Angela Chan, and Strauss Shi.

In 2016, Tsu Weiling and her husband, conductor Long Yu, honoured Isaac Stern by launching The Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition; the first ever international competition in her hometown. Tsu Weiling served as a judge for this competition. In an interview, she expressed the cultural and political significance of Shanghai hosting such a violinist competition:

"A performance should be a conversation between the soloist, the conductor and the orchestra; at the same time you have to communicate with the audience. Music should connect, no matter what, through slow notes, long notes, melodic passages, fast passages – even when you have an eight-bar rest while the orchestra plays."

In 2009 Tsu Weiling created the China Trio with pianist Sheng Yuan and cellist Zhu Yibing. One of the main reasons for forming the trio is to provide the Chinese public an opportunity to listen to chamber music, which has a more intimate experience than orchestral concerts due the much smaller number of players performing, in this case, three. To explain a lack of chamber music presence in China, Tsu Weiling cites pressures for soloists to focus on their solo careers rather than divert time towards small group performances, "I founded The China Trio with two like-minded musicians to fill a vacancy for professional chamber music in China". The China Trio performed at the Shanghai Music in the Summer Air Festival in 2016.

In 1984 Tsu Weiling had her debut recital at Carnegie Hall, and in 1988 she performed at Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Symphony Orchestra, becoming the first violinist from the Chinese mainland to perform as a soloist at both venues. Between 1993-2000, Tsu Weiling held the position of First Associate Concertmaster of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra where her husband, maestro Long Yu, was guest conductor. Tsu Weiling holds two professorships; one from the Central Conservatory in Beijing on November 2000, and the other awarded by The Shanghai Conservatory in September 2014.

In 1980 Tsu Weiling travelled to America where she first studied at the Peabody Conservatory with Daniel Heifetz. She then enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music to be mentored by Dorothy DeLay, where she remained for three years until she transferred to the Manhatton School of Music to study with Raphael Bronstein. In 1981 she won first place at the Manoque International Young Artist Competition, and would soon after win the Waldo Mayo Talent Award and the Artists International Competition.

Tsu Weiling began her studies at the Central Conservatory in Beijing in 1977 as part of the first generation of college students post-Cultural Revolution. During her second year of college in 1979, Tsu Weiling performed in front of violin master Isaac Stern when he visited China. She was subsequently featured in the documentary From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China, directed by Murray Lerner, which details Stern's visit and his experiences being the first American musician to collaborate with the Chinese orchestra. She can be seen playing an excerpt from Caprice after a study in the form of a waltz by Saint-Saens, arranged by Ysaÿe. The documentary won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1981. Tsu Weiling describes meeting Stern as "revolutionary. Like a tornado,", and upon hearing him play, she comments, "it was like being in the desert for so long, and then all of a sudden -- water! A fountain!". The meeting inspired her to pursue studies abroad. During filming, Tsu Weiling met violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin who sponsored her to study in Switzerland.

Tsu Weiling also relied on music scores smuggled in from visiting Soviet Union musicians, which were then hand copied using pencil and passed to her, often with wrong notes or rhythms due to the copying process. Among the banned scores they were able to copy were etudes by Schradieck, Sevcik, Kreutzer, and Dancla. However, since concertos were so rare to find, Tsu Weiling had not even heard of Mendelssohn's Concerto until it was secretly copied. She comments that "...this is how we learned, with no recordings, nothing. No model we could learn from. It was very difficult situation during the Cultural Revolution." Around Tsu Weiling's sophomore year in high school, circa 1976, The Gang of Four, who had controlled the cultural and educational systems in China by enforcing the ideals of the Cultural Revolution, collapsed. This allowed her to audition for the Central Conservatory of Music after schools and universities were re-opened to college students, following a ban spanning ten years being lifted.

Vera Tsu Weiling (born 1960) is a professional violinist and Professor and Master tutor of the Central Conservatory in Beijing and Shanghai Conservatory. She is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China, directed by Murray Lerner. Tsu Weiling serves as co-chairman of the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition and vice-president of the China Violin Society.