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Melissa White
American violinist Melissa White has enchanted audiences around the world as both a soloist and a chamber musician. A first-prize laureate in the Sphinx Competition, Ms. White has received critical acclaim for solo performances with such leading ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Atlanta, Baltimore, Colorado, Detroit, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras. In April 2016 she served as interim concertmaster in performances and recordings of the Louisville Orchestra. Internationally, she has appeared as soloist with Poland’s Fillharmonia Dolnoslaska; with the Colombian Youth Orchestra in a tour of that country; and as a recitalist in Baku, Azerbaijian.
In the 2017-18 season Ms. White made her solo debut with the National Philharmonic under Music Director Piotr Gajewski and returned to the Chicago Sinfonietta, where she partnered with fellow Sphinx Laureate Ifetayo Ali-Landing in Saint-Saëns’s La muse et le poète for violin, cello and orchestra. Her recent orchestral activity includes return engagements with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra and National Philharmonic, and debuts with the Monroe, Pasadena, Knox-Galesburg, and Johnson City symphony orchestras.
Ms. White is a founding member of New York-based Harlem Quartet, where since 2006 her passion and artistry have contributed to performances that have been hailed for “bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing and intelligent” (Cincinnati Enquirer). Together with Harlem Quartet she has worked with such classical-music luminaries as Itzhak Perlman, Ida Kavakian, Paul Katz, and Anthony McGill; appeared in many of the country’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, the White House, and the Kennedy Center; and performed in Europe, Africa, Japan, and the U.K., where in 2017 the quartet began a three-year residency with London’s Royal College of Music.
A native of Michigan, Ms. White holds performance degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, where her teachers included Jaime Laredo, Ida Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, and Miriam Fried. Her current instrument, “Matilda,” was commissioned as part of a Sphinx MPower Artist Grant in 2014 by the American violin maker Ryan Soltis.
Melissa White is represented worldwide by New York-based Sciolino Artist Management.
December 2019
Do not make any alterations to this biography. Concert presenters and other interested parties may obtain an updated and/or abridged version by contacting Chester Lane, Director of Communications at Sciolino Artist Management, chester@samnyc.us.