American violinist Melissa White has enchanted audiences around the world as both a soloist and a chamber musician. A first-prize laureate in the Sphinx Competition, Ms. White has received critical acclaim for solo performances with such leading ensembles as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Atlanta, Baltimore, Colorado, Detroit, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras. Internationally, she has appeared as a soloist with Poland’s Fillharmonia Dolnoslaska and the Colombian Youth Orchestra on a tour of that country, and as a recitalist in Baku, Azerbaijan.
In February 2020 Ms. White gave the Baltimore debut of Florence Price’s Concerto No.1 as a returning soloist with the National Philharmonic under Music Director Piotr Gajewski. The Washington Post heralded, “White was an excellent advocate, prioritizing ease and fluency over intensity, suiting the music’s lyric and episodic nature.” Her other recent orchestral activity includes return engagements with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Sinfonietta, and debuts with the Monroe, Pasadena, Knox-Galesburg, and Johnson City symphony orchestras.
Ms. White is a founding member of New York-based Harlem Quartet, where since 2006 her passion and artistry have contributed to performances that have been hailed for “bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing and intelligent” (Cincinnati Enquirer). The quartet is currently the Quartet-in-residence at the Royal College of Music in London and will begin a one-year visiting residency at Centre College in Danville, KY, this upcoming fall. Together with Harlem Quartet, she has worked with such classical-music luminaries as Itzhak Perlman, Ida Kavafian, Paul Katz, and Anthony McGill; appeared in many of the country’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, the White House, and the Kennedy Center; and performed in Europe, Africa, Japan, and the UK. In 2013 the quartet collaborated with jazz pianist Chick Corea in a Grammy-winning Hot House album that included Corea’s "Mozart Goes Dancing," which won a separate Grammy as Best Instrumental Composition.
A native of Michigan, Ms. White holds performance degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, where her teachers included Jaime Laredo, Ida Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, and Miriam Fried. Her current instrument, “Matilda,” was commissioned as part of a Sphinx MPower Artist Grant in 2014 by the American violin maker Ryan Soltis.
Melissa White is represented worldwide by New York-based Sciolino Artist Management.