Anya Wilkening – Geneva Music Festival

Anya Wilkening has studied violin since she was 5 years of age and continues her musical engagement as a performer, scholar and teacher of music. Ms. Wilkening earned her Master’s of Music at the Shepherd School of Music in 2018 studying with Paul Kantor. While at Rice University, she was the recipient of the Joe Anne Berwick ’44 Endowed Scholarship in Music. In the fall of 2018, she began doctoral studies in Historical Musicology at Columbia University. Ms. Wilkening has performed in multiple venues including the Aspen Music Festival and School, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, and at Carnegie Hall with the Shepherd School of Music. An avid chamber musician, Ms. Wilkening is a founding member of the Kamila Quartet, with whom she recently participated in the Center for Advanced Quartet Study at the Aspen Music Festival and School and where Ms. Wilkening was awarded the Neuman Family Foundation Scholarship. The quartet was also invited to study and perform at the prestigious Robert Mann String Quartet Seminar (2017 & 2018), collaborated with world-renowned pianist Jon Kimura Parker, and members appeared as Young Artists in Residence at the Strings Music Festival. Ms. Wilkening was named a Da Camera Young Artist in September of 2017, performing throughout Houston as both soloist and chamber musician. Ms. Wilkening performs on a 1761 Florentine violin made by Lorenzo and Tomaso Carcassi. As a teacher of music, Ms. Wilkening has developed outreach programs for the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, the Strings Music Festival, and has taught at the Rivers School and Campbell Music School. As a Da Camera Young Artist, Ms. Wilkening served as a principal teaching artist in local schools, bringing music into the classroom in the context of students’ concurrent academic pursuits. In 2016, the Massachusetts Cultural Council awarded Ms. Wilkening a grant to organize concerts and outreach on the Outer Cape and Nantucket. As a musicologist, Ms. Wilkening is interested in how music helps us contextualize eras and cultures. Her research interests include medieval vernacular and pious song, religious drama, and gender in music; in 2015, she was awarded the First Prize for undergraduate students in the Fondren Library Research Awards in recognition of her research on the Magdalenian identity in fifteenth century German Passion plays. More recently, she presented her thesis exploring the contrafacta of Gautier de Coinci, at the Conference in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Rice University. Her interest in public musicology led to her involvement with Houston Public Media, where she served as the Arts & Culture assistant from 2016-2018. During her tenure at Houston Public Media she wrote and produced a weekly show (“Music in the Making”), authored web articles, and conducted interviews focusing on the local arts scene.

Other Artist

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Clara Lyon

Clara Lyon is an accomplished performer and curator who forges meaningful connections across sonic languages and societal contexts to foster investigation and imagination.

Clive Greensmith

From 1999 until its final season in 2013, Clive Greensmith was a member of the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet, giving over one hundred performances each year in the most prestigious international venues, including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, London’s South Bank, Paris Chatelet, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo.

Eliot Heaton

Violinist Eliot Heaton is the current Concertmaster of the Michigan Opera Theatre, Des Moines Metro Opera, and the Saginaw Bay Symphony.

Eric Wong

Celebrated for a “tone like toasted caramel. Amazing.” (Musical Toronto), Eric Wong is the violist of the Cavani String Quartet.

Esther Park

Pianist Esther Park has performed as a soloist with orchestras and in recitals across the United States as well as Asia and major European cities.