Press
“White was an excellent advocate, prioritizing ease and fluency over intensity, suiting the music’s lyric and episodic nature.”
“White’s playing was absolutely breathtaking. I have no other words for the grace, precision, and warmth she brought to the stage.”
“White’s elegant playing was warmly expressive and lyrical without being overwrought. Her high range was especially glittering...”
“Highly satisfying...by making her violin sing elegantly...White clearly connected with the audience and did it without pandering.”
“Melissa White...got an extra warm welcome in her home town and lived up to it. “Poeme” is...ideally suited to White’s steady, perfectly weighted tone and deeply centered musical presence.”
Melissa White, violinist
American violinist Melissa White has enchanted audiences and critics
around the world for her “warmly expressive and lyrical…glittering” playing (Chicago Classical Review) and for “making her violin sing elegantly” (Aspen Times). Ms. White’s rapid rise as a soloist has captured the attention of orchestras and audiences worldwide, many of whom already know her for her successes as a founding member of the Grammy-winning Harlem Quartet.
Orchestral highlights of the 2024-25 season include performances with the Baton Rouge, Delaware, Hilton Head, Jackson, Rogue Valley, and Springfield Symphony Orchestras, Orchestra Iowa, and the Cape Town Philharmonic. In addition to her role as the Joyce C. Willis Artist in Residence at the Hartford Symphony last season, other recent orchestral performances for Ms. White include features with the Philadelphia Orchestra (with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting), the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Chicago and Northwest Sinfoniettas, and the Charlotte, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Richmond Symphony, West Virginia Symphony Orchestras, and the Aspen, Brevard, Chautauqua, and Heartland Festival Orchestras.
Solo recital debuts for Ms. White this season includes Boston Conservatory, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Chamber Music Detroit, and The Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts in Kingston, Ontario. Since 2023, she has appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall, Corpus Christi Chamber Music Society, the Phillips Collection, and Purdue Convocations, among others.
Beyond orchestra and recital appearances, Ms. White relishes the opportunity to perform in chamber music settings alongside close friends and colleagues. In June 2023, she joined the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective at London’s Wigmore Hall alongside Hilary Hahn, and Ms. White reunited with the ensemble for performances in the 2023-24 season from Germany to major series along the East Coast. She also collaborated with the DUBHE Ensemble in the summer of 2023 at the National Orchestra Institute + Festival and appeared with them at Chicago’s Harris Theater last season. Other recent chamber music engagements beyond the Harlem Quartet include collaborations at Festival Napa Valley, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Sarasota Music Festival, among others.
A first-prize laureate in the Sphinx Competition, she has performed with such leading U.S. ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Pops, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Atlanta, Baltimore, Colorado, Detroit, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras. Internationally, she has appeared as soloist with Poland’s Filharmonia Dolnoslaska; with the Colombian Youth Orchestra in a tour of that country; with the Czech National Philharmonic; and as a recitalist in Baku, Azerbaijian, and Jelenia Gora, Poland. Her film credits include a violin solo in the soundtrack to Jordan Peele’s 2019 psychological thriller Us; and in addition to her numerous classical performances she has also performed alongside several pop artists including Pharrell, Bruno Mars, Alicia Keys, and Lauryn Hill.
Ms. White is a founding member of New York-based Harlem Quartet, where since 2006 her passion and artistry have contributed to performances hailed for “bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing and intelligent” (Cincinnati Enquirer). Together with Harlem Quartet, she has appeared in many of the country’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, the White House, and the Kennedy Center; and toured throughout the U.S., as well as in Europe, Africa, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Harlem Quartet has collaborated closely with leading jazz musicians including Chick Corea and Gary Burton with whom their recording , “Mozart Goes Dancing” won three Grammy Awards, including the Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition in 2013. Harlem Quartet was named quartet-in-residence at Montclair State University in the fall of 2021, and has served as the visiting quartet-in-residence at the Royal College of Music in London since 2016. In 2024, Harlem Quartet took home a Grammy for Best Classical Compendium for their work on “Passion for Bach and Coltrane,” with Imani Winds, A.B. Spellman, and jazz trio Alex Brown, Edward Perez, and Neal Smith.
A passionate educator, Ms. White currently serves as Music Artist Faculty at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. In the fall of 2022, she also joined the Music Faculty at the University of Buffalo as Professor of Music.
Born and raised in Lansing, Michigan, she received her BMus from The Curtis Institute of Music and MMus from New England Conservatory, where her teachers included Jaime Laredo, Ida Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, and Miriam Fried.
In addition to her musical career, Ms. White has enjoyed practicing various styles of yoga for more than a decade, and completed training in both Vinyasa and Ashtanga at Sampoorna Yoga School in Goa, India. She is the co-founder of Intermission, a groundbreaking program that unites body, mind, breath, and music-making through yoga and meditation; the program comprises sessions for students and retreats for professionals.
Melissa is represented worldwide by Dinin Arts Management & Consulting. She is incredibly grateful to be playing a c1780 Ferdinando Gagliano violin, currently on loan from Strumenti.
Schedule
Upcoming Concerts:
Past Concerts: