The Minnesota Orchestra has announced the appointment of ERIN KEEFE as concertmaster. She begins officially with the opening concerts of the orchestra’s 2011-12 season, September 29-October 1, and succeeds JORJA FLEEZANIS, who held the concertmaster post from 1989 until 2009 when she left to take up a violin professorship at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Keefe, 31, has been an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since the start of the 2010-11 season. She has collaborated with such artists and ensembles as Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Gary Graffman, Edgar Meyer, William Preucil, the Emerson String Quartet, and the Brooklyn and Boston chamber music societies. She has appeared widely in recital throughout the U.S. and Europe, and has performed at such festivals as Bravo! Vail Valley, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, and Ravinia. Among her awards are an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2006) and grand prizes in Italy’s Valsesia Musica International Violin Competition (2009) and Poland’s Torun International Violin Competition (2007). Keefe holds a master’s degree from The Juilliard School and a bachelor’s from the Curtis Institute of Music. Her teachers have included Ronald Copes, Ida Kavafian, Arnold Steinhardt, Philip Setzer, Philipp Naegele, Brian Lewis, and Teri Einfeldt.
Erin Keefe photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco
Posted September 23, 2011
