The American String Project

Violinist Frank Almond holds the Charles and Marie Caestecker Concertmaster Chair at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He returned to the MSO after holding positions as Concertmaster of the Rotterdam Philharmonic with Valery Gergiev, and Guest Concertmaster of the London Philharmonic with Kurt Masur. From 2007-09 he was a guest Concertmaster at the Seattle Symphony. He continues an active schedule of solo and chamber music performances in the US and abroad including recent appearances with the Frankly Music, the Nara Academy in Nara, Japan, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Music in the Vineyards, the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, and various solo appearances with orchestras. He has been a member of the chamber group An die Musik in New York City since 1997, and also directs the highly successful Frankly Music Chamber Series based in Milwaukee. At 17, he was one of the youngest prizewinners in the history of the Nicolo Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy, and five years later was one of two American prizewinners at the Eighth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, which was documented in an award-winning PBS film. Since then he has kept up an eclectic mix of activities in addition to his Concertmaster duties, appearing both as a soloist and chamber musician.

In addition to his work with An die Musik, Mr. Almond’s talent as a chamber musician has generated collaborations over the years with many of today’s well-known institutions, including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Hal Leonard Corporation, the Ravinia Festival Music in the Vineyards, and numerous other summer festivals.

He has recorded for Summit, Albany, Boolean (his own label), Newport Classic, Wergo and New Albion and has appeared numerous times on NPR’s Performance Today. In both 2002 and 2004 An die Musik received Grammy nominations for its “Timeless Tales” series. The re-release of Mr. Almond’s recording of the complete Brahms Sonatas, performed in collaboration with pianist William Wolfram, brought extraordinary critical acclaim, and was listed in the American Record Guide top recordings of 2001. Frank’s AVIE label also to much acclaim, and was named a “Best of 2007″ by the American Record Guide. His new CD of American violin and piano music was recently released on Brian Zeger.

Mr. Almond holds two degrees from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Dorothy DeLay. Other important teachers included Michael Tseitlin, Felix Galimir, and Joseph Silverstein. When he’s not traveling around playing the violin he lives in Milwaukee with his wife and two young daughters. He plays on a violin by Antonio Stradivari from 1715, the “ex-Lipinski”. In 2008 he started writing an online column called nondivisi.