Dawn Harms' diverse career ranges from being a chamber musician, violin soloist, and concertmaster, to being a music director and conductor. She is a first violinist in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Associate Concertmaster for the New Century Chamber Orchestra, and Co-Concertmaster with the Oakland Symphony. She also records regularly at Skywalker Studios for movies and video games.  She teaches violin and viola, and coaches chamber music at Stanford University, and is the conductor of the pre-college string orchestra at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Dawn was the Music Director and conductor of the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony for 11 seasons, and has conducted the San Francisco Opera orchestra 3 times in concert. Harms was chosen as a Fellow at the exclusive American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival, where she worked with some of the top conductors of the world. Dawn has designed her own family show and has performed it with symphonies orchestra throughout the United States, New Zealand, and Japan.

She has also performed chamber music with Lynn Harrell, Jake Heggie, Frederica von Stadt, and Nadja Solerno Sonnenberg

Dawn plays on her cousin Tom Waits' CDs "Alice," "Blood Money, and Bad Is Me.
Dawn also has two solo CD's, "The Black Swan" and "The Hot Canary" that can be found on cdbaby.com or www.dawnharms.com.