A participant in the Violin Society of America’s Oberlin Acoustics Workshop since 2013, he works alongside the scientists and master luthiers who study the instrument itself, and puts the answers to work on stage, in the studio, and on his own 2018 Samuel Zygmuntowicz.
A lecture-recital on how a violin actually works: wood, strings, frequencies; built from thirteen years inside the Oberlin Acoustics Workshop. Playing alternates with explanation, and two instruments, modern and baroque, are compared in the room.
For festivals, universities, chamber series Markets Europe and the United StatesThe Romanian repertoire as birthright rather than novelty: Enescu, Porumbescu, Dinicu, and the road out of Bucharest that became the album From Bucharest to Kansas City. A recital with a narrative spine.
For European festivals, Romanian cultural institutes Markets Germany, Austria, Switzerland firstThe film-music programme, drawn from sessions at Capitol Records, Fox and Warner Brothers; what the violin does inside a score, played by someone who has experienced first hand the old Hollywood sound.
For US pops series, EU film-music festivals Markets United States, then EuropeRepertoire, timings and technical requirements on request.
Colour on hover · click to enlarge · press photographs available on request
Tema d’Amore · Del Gesù Club Concert
Op. 64
A film by COLDEA Productions
Further dates in preparation.
Management
by email
Biography, photographs, one-sheets and press kit on request
by telephone
+1 (323) 432 0233 Los Angeles · +39 352 236 3923 Europe
for bookings
© 2026 Cristian Fatu
Cristian Fatu knows how a violin makes its sound, and has spent a career finding out. A participant in the Violin Society of America’s Oberlin Acoustics Workshop since 2013, he works alongside the scientists and master luthiers who study the instrument itself, has performed tonal optimizations with Thomastik-Infeld strings, and has filmed side-by-side comparisons of Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù violins from the collection of Dr. William Sloan. His conviction is quietly contrarian: a great violin is an optimised tool, not a relic; a great modern instrument can stand beside the legends of Cremona. He proves the point nightly on his own 2018 Samuel Zygmuntowicz.
Born in Bucharest, Fatu began the violin at four and trained at the George Enescu Music Lyceum and the National Music University of Bucharest, later at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and Park University in the United States, studying with Ștefan Gheorghiu, Mihaela Martin and Ben Sayevich. A prizewinner in more than twenty-five national and international competitions, he carries the Romanian violin tradition of Enescu, Porumbescu and Dinicu as a birthright, an arc he traced on the album From Bucharest to Kansas City. “A sort of musical travelogue,” wrote The Independent (Kansas City), “telling the story of Fatu’s own life-journey.”
In America, Fatu led the Montclaire String Quartet as first violinist (2014 to 2018) and served as concertmaster of the Charleston Chamber Orchestra. In February 2019 he gave the world premiere of Mathew Jackfert’s Violin Concerto, “A Black Bear Awakens in Winter,” at the Kennedy Center.
Now based in Los Angeles, he lives in two musical worlds at once: on stage with the Pacific Symphony and in LA Ballet productions, at Carnegie Hall with Ensemble Iberica and the Hollywood Bowl with Pink Martini; and inside the scoring stages of Capitol Records, Fox and Warner Brothers, where his violin threads through film and television scores heard by millions. He teaches at the Orange County School of the Arts and at Orange County Music and Dance.
He is also a father of three, in a house of tubas, jazz standards and practice mutes, which may be the real reason he stays so curious about how sound works.