Ingrid Matthews

Ingrid Matthews is well established as one of today’s most respected baroque violinists.  She won first prize in the prestigious Erwin Bodky International Competition for Early Music in 1989, and in 1990 joined Toronto’s Tafelmusik, with whom she performed extensively on three continents in venues such as the Proms and the Barbican Center of London, the Stuttgart and Festival, the Utrecht Festival, and the Mostly Mozart Festival of New York. She worked with many other leading  North American period-instrument ensembles as well, including Philharmonia Baroque of San Francisco, Joshua Rifkin’s Bach Ensemble of New York, and the American Bach Soloists of San Francisco, before founding the Seattle Baroque Orchestra in 1994 with harpsichordist Byron Schenkman. Matthews served as Music Director of SBO for 19 years, creating a  beloved Seattle series as well as touring from Vermont to Dubai, before stepping down from that position in 2013.

In addition to duo work with Schenkman, Ingrid Matthews was first violinist of the celebrated group La Luna, and she has collaborated with most of the leading figures on the American early music scene. Her career as a chamber musician has taken her to such venues as the Frick Collection (New York), the Boston Early Music Festival, the Berkeley Festival, Netwoork voor Oude Muziek (the Netherlands), the Getty Center (LA), the Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque Society, Early Music Vancouver, Woodstock Concerts, the Cambridge Society for Early Music, the Newberry Library (Chicago), CBC-Toronto, the San Francisco Early Music Society, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington DC) and the Library of Congress, among many others. In 2018 Matthews begins her tenure as the new violinist for esteemed San Francisco Bay area ensemble Musica Pacifica.

As a guest director, Matthews has worked with the New York Collegium, the Magnolia Festival Orchestra, the Victoria (BC) Symphony, the Bloomington Early Music Festival Orchestra, and led the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra on an 11-concert tour of Australia; she has appeared as concerto soloist with Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Houston’s  Ars Lyrica, the Bach Sinfonia of Washington DC, Musica Angelica of Los Angeles, the LA Bach Society, Les Idees Heureuses and La Voix Humaine of Montreal, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, New Trinity Baroque Orchestra of Atlanta, and many others.

Among the most-recorded baroque violinists of her generation, Matthews has won  international critical acclaim for a discography which ranges from the earliest solo violin repertoire through the great Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach.  Of the latter recording, the critic for American Record Guide writes “this superb recording is my top recommendation for this music… on either modern or period instruments.”

Ingrid Matthews is on the faculty of the Cornish College of the Arts, and in 2011- 2012 was engaged to lead Oberlin College's Baroque Orchestra program.  She taught baroque violin at UCLA from 1998-2002, and has held teaching residencies at Indiana University, the University of Washington, the University of Toronto, and at many of the leading early music workshops.  Matthews is a graduate of Indiana University, where she studied with Josef Gingold and Stanley Ritchie.

She also plays jazz and swing styles (heard regularly at Restaurant Roux in Seattle) and is active as a visual artist.

Program

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