Sheila Browne
Phone: (336)770-3361
Email: brownes@ncarts.edu

A dynamic and versatile artist, violist Sheila Browne has concertized in many of the world's major halls as a soloist, chamber musician, and as principal of several orchestras. A finalist at Carnegie Hall in the Pro Musicis International Solo Awards, she has also been a prizewinner as a member of the Arianna and Gotham string quartets.

Ms. Browne has collaborated with such artists as James Buswell, Nicholas Chumachenko, Miriam Fried, Paul Katz, Gilbert Kalish, David Krakauer, Ruth Laredo, Richard Stoltzman and the Vermeer Quartet. She has been soloist and principal of the Juilliard, Mainz, Freiburg, German-French, and Madrid's Queen Sofia chamber orchestras. Also an active recitalist, she has given concerts and outreach performances in North America and Europe. A proponent of new music, she has premiered many new works, including the recent world premiere of Kenneth Jacobs' “Approaching Northern Darkness,” a concerto written for her. Her latest CD, of viola-cello duos, is due to be released in 2006.

As principal of the New World Symphony, she was featured by Michael Tilson-Thomas in the PBS documentary "Beethoven Alive!" Working closely with Krystof Penderecki on his solo music at the Banff Festival, she was broadcast on CBC radio throughout Canada, and has been heard on radio stations in South America, Europe, and the United States as well. Other festivals Ms. Browne has played include the Donaueschingen, Evian, Great Lakes, Jeunesses Musicales, Music Academy of the West, Sun Valley, Tanglewood, and the Texas music festivals.

Ms. Browne was Karen Tuttle's teaching assistant at The Juilliard School for four years, where she received her B.M. degree and a Naumburg scholarship, among others. She was awarded a German Academic Exchange Grant (DAAD) for studies with soloist Kim Kashkashian at the Freiburger Hochschule, where she received an Aufbau degree, and also received an M.M. at Rice University's Shepherd School, where she was Karen Ritscher's teaching assistant while she was in Paul Katz's Quartet Residency Program.

She has been an artist/teacher-in-residence at the University of Missouri with the Arianna Quartet, as well as assistant professor of viola at The University of Tennessee. She has taught at the Green Mountain, Killington, Knoxville and American Festival of the Arts summer festivals. She will be teaching at California Summer Music Festival in Pebble Beach the summer of 2007.