Born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Fung Chern Hwei absorbed a large amount of musical information since young in his diversed surroundings: Chinese pop and classical music, Indian Bollywood tunes, Malay dance music, and Western classical music. He insisted to learn the violin since he was 4 or 5 years old, but couldn't find a teacher until he was 8 years old. Since then Chern Hwei thrusted himself into the world of violin and never looked back.
Never been a good boy in playing music, Chern Hwei soon found himself imitating electric guitar and saxophone sound on his violin. In his high school years, he actually broke the school's banning on rock music and electronic instruments by sneaking in a heavy metal band onto the stage during a charity night.
Ever since getting into college, Hwei started to learn to improvise over jazz tunes and since then fell in love with it, but carried on with his classical studies. He became an apprentice in the prestigious Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, thus rehearsing and performing with the group fairly regularly for 3 years until he came to New York City to pursue his graduate studies in the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, under Daniel Phillips of the Orion String Quartet.
Upon finishing his studies, Chern Hwei chose to stay in New York City to fulfill his dreams as a freelance musician, playing different genres of music, absorbing yet even more musical languages and expressions. Styles that he plays frequently includes, western classical, jazz, Middle Eastern belly dance music, baroque historical performance, rock, and hip hop. With his ability to improvise, his trained orchestral skills, his passion and curiosity for all kinds of music, he got to play for many interesting artists and projects.
Artists that he was fortunate to play with includes Tony Bennet, Bobby McFerrin, Antonio Sanchez, Ada Rovatti, Michelle Marie Nestor, Dr Lonnie Smith, George Colligan, Janek Gwizdala, Mark Feldman, Dana Leong, Jeremy Harman, Mike Block, among others.
As a studio musician, he recently recorded for Ryuichi Sakamoto for his latest film score for the Iranian film "Women Without Men", also for a new film by Michel Gondry.
Chern Hwei is currently working on his latest electro-acoustic project, Rozemary'z Babiez.
