Dr. Sarah Pizzichemi

Dr. Sarah Pizzichemi has distinguished herself as a versatile artist with international performances as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician. Sarah’s touring in the United States and Canada has included performances at the Kennedy Center, the Aspen Music Festival, the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society in Canada, Bass Concert Hall in Austin, Texas, and Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Washington. Abroad, she has performed at the Casalmaggiore Music Festival in Casalmaggiore, Italy, Xi’an Jiaotong University in Xi’an, China, and Zhejiang University City College in Hangzhou, China. Recent collaborators in performance include world-class musicians such as the Miró Quartet, the Chiara String Quartet, and Marcy Stonikas. Sarah is the concertmaster of the Saratoga Orchestra, a member of the League of American Orchestras. From 2015-2019, Sarah was co-concertmaster of Seattle Collaborative Orchestra, a mentorship orchestra focused on diversity in classical music and winner of the American Prize in 2018. While earning her doctorate degree, she was a member of the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra first violin section. Sarah is also co-concertmaster of the Pacific Northwest Conducting Institute during the summer. 

Sarah is a founding member and first violinist of the Skyros Quartet, now in their eleventh year. Located in the Seattle area, Skyros Quartet brings a bright and inventive style to the performance stage. They can be seen performing, teaching, and leading community events in the Puget Sound region. In addition to their work in the Pacific Northwest, Skyros has concertized across the US, Canada, and China. Skyros released Introspective Odyssey in 2015, the debut album for the quartet with Parma Recording’s Navona Label, to great acclaim. Gaplegate Classical-Modern Review exclaimed: “To hear all three of these works so well done is a rare treat…They take to each piece with a ravishing, articulate, sonically appealing approach that has passion more than sentiment, fully coherent phrasing and a sort of introspective reading that is true to the album’s title.” During 2020, their tenth anniversary year, Skyros Quartet launched their 501(c)3 non-profit organization, Constellation Creatives. 

A passionate educator, Sarah maintains her award-winning Pizzichemi Violin Studio, and has taught violin students continuously since 2001. Sarah is a co-artistic director for Chamber Music Guild (CMG), a non-profit organization with six educational programs in the Seattle area. She co-created and developed the curriculum for the CMG in-school chamber music coaching program. Sarah is an artistic director and coach for the CMG summer student chamber music festival. She is a co-producer, content creator, and host of the chamber music educational podcast, The Counterpoint Club. She was on the teaching faculty as Instructor of Violin at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. Sarah also worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in theory, chamber music, teaching artistry and outreach while at UNL. She taught for the UT String Project, and also for the Chamber Music in Public Schools (CHAMPS) program in Austin, Texas. Sarah received training from the Suzuki Association of the Americas for Suzuki Violin and Viola, as well as Early Childhood Education, and has nine years of extensive training in traditional pedagogy. 

Sarah co-founded Evergreen Music Press to broaden the materials available in string and chamber music education in the Spring of 2021. www.evergreenmusicpress.com

Making her solo violin debut with the Seattle Symphony at the age of sixteen in 2004, Sarah went on to receive a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance with honors from the University of Texas at Austin Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music, and she continued her Master of Music in Chamber Music Performance at UT. Sarah earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as part of the graduate string quartet-in-residence. Her dissertation, Virtuoso Violinist Maud Powell: Enduring Champion for American Women in Professional Music, adds to research literature in the field of women in professional art music. Sarah’s main teachers and mentors include the Coleman Violin Studio, Brian Lewis, Sandy Yamamoto, Hyeyung Yoon, the Miró Quartet, the Chiara String Quartet, Sylvia Rosenberg, James Dunham, Jerzy Kaplanek, Earl Carlyss, Joan Tower, and the Penderecki, Muir, American, Takács, Pacifica, and Jupiter String Quartets. 

Sarah performs on a late nineteenth century Emil Max Penzel bow, 2005 bow by Paul Martin Siefried, and a 1778 Ægidius Klotz violin. 

www.sarahpizzichemi.com

(last updated: February 2021)