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GENE WIE is a conductor, chamber musician, and educator, dividing his time equally between the classroom and concert stage. His performances on violin, viola, clarinet, and saxophone have taken him across the United States, Canada, Europe, and the South Pacific.

Gene is Orchestra Director at St. Margaret's Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, where he is in the process of developing a comprehensive orchestral training program in grades K-12 for one of the nation's elite private institutions. Upon the completion of the school's new Performing Arts Education Center in May 2012, the program will include beginning violin classes for students in grades K-3, string orchestras in grades 4-5, full symphonic ensembles for middle school (6-8) and Upper School (9-12), and a student teacher string pedagogy workshop that supports the K-3 String Academy. He also teaches Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science and Introduction to Software Development.

He is Music Director of the Community Youth Orchestra of Southern California, a non-profit performing arts education organization founded in 1989 that provides orchestral training, performances, and community service for K-12 and college students throughout the Southern California region. Serving entirely as a volunteer, he annually assembles a superb coaching staff, mentors aspiring teachers/conductors, introduces students to a vast repertory of both traditional classical as well as new works, and leads two full symphony orchestras in concert performances.

He is currently the clarinetist of the Irvine Trio, where he performs with Minji Noh (piano) and William Fitzpatrick (violin/viola). During the past decade Gene has appeared as first violinist with the Elegie String Quartet, principal clarinet with the South Orange County Chamber Orchestra, concertmaster with the Blackbird Music Project, and as a viola substitute with the Pacific Symphony. In the field of modern dance, he has improvised/performed on numerous instruments for premieres by  Alan Terricciano and Norman Beede for the American Repertory Dance Company, Saint Joseph Ballet, and UC Irvine Dance, and in classes for choreographers Donald McKayle, Lisa Naugle, and Bonnie Oda Homsey. He has conducted world premieres of works by Jason Barabba (Study in Orange, String Orchestra, 2006), Jesse Green (City of Dis, Vocal/String Quartets, 2007), and A. Terricciano (Evening Prayer from Blue Motions, String Orchestra, 2009), conducted ensembles for musical theater productions at the school and community theatre level of which his favorites include Les Miserables, The Secret Garden, My Fair Lady, and Peter Pan, and performed as orchestra leader in numerous college and community theatre productions including Victor/Victoria, Beauty and the Beast, Pirates of Penzance, and She Loves Me.

A faculty member in the Instrumental Music Conservatory at the Orange County High School of the Arts from 2003 to 2011, he taught an innovative course in Music Technology as well as Senior Conservatory Concert Orchestra, Junior Conservatory String Orchestra, Chamber Music, String Masterclass, Music Appreciation, and guest conducted the Wind Ensemble. He has coached string and wind sections for numerous orchestra, wind ensemble, and marching band programs including the University of California, Irvine, Chapman University, Orange County Youth Symphony, University High School, Corona del Mar High School, Santa Margarita Catholic High School, and Rancho Buena Vista High School. His private students have earned admission to music programs at Berkeley, USC, UCLA, UC Irvine, CSU Long Beach, CSU Fullerton, San Francisco State, Stanford, Indiana, Oberlin, and Northwestern.

During secondary school, he performed for eight seasons with the San Diego Civic Youth Orchestra, participating in two international concert tours, first as Concertmaster and later as Principal Clarinet. He continued this musical journey during college, where spent seven seasons exploring a wide variety of instrumentation with the UCI Symphony Orchestra as Principal Clarinet, Principal Viola, and section violinist; the UCI Wind Ensemble as Principal Clarinet, Principal Alto Saxophone, section french horn, and graduate student conductor; the Pep Band on mellophone and alto saxophone, and various community bands and orchestras. His current project is studying trumpet, playing big band and brass quintet literature. He has also performed at over a thousand weddings and special events throughout California.

Committed to bringing young musicians into the world of chamber music, Gene currently co-directs the Chamber Music Workshop, an annual summer program component of CYOSC, with his wife Chika. He served on the Artist Faculty of ChamberArtsFest (USA/France) where he coached, studied, and performed major works in the repertoire with the guidance of artists such as William Fitzpatrick, Peter Marsh, Yoko Matsuda, Robert Becker, and Margaret Parkins from 2003 to 2009. He coached chamber ensembles and rhythmic training at Viola Workout (Colorado) for five years and spent a decade as a conductor and staff member at Arrowbear Music Camp (California). His musical mentors include William Fitzpatrick, Haroutune Bedelian, William Kennedy, Hong Cheng, and Lori Franke (violin/viola), Amanda Walker and Dorea Tate (clarinet), and Stephen Tucker (conducting). He attended numerous summer festivals as a student and feels enormously privileged to have studied with the Blaeu Quartet at the Ameropa Music Festival (Czech Republic) and the Miro Quartet at the San Diego Chamber Music Workshop (California). He recently participated in the 2011 Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies at the Juilliard School in New York, and appeared as guest artist/teacher at the South Valley Suzuki Academy's 2011 summer workshop.

A software engineer turned musician, he earned B.S. Information and Computer Science and M.F.A. Music degrees from the University of California, Irvine. His hobbies include video games (his favorites are Starcraft and Mass Effect), cooking, travel, and tennis.