Guest ArtistsSimone Porter, violin

Violinist Simone Porter has been recognized as an emerging artist of impassioned energy, musical integrity and vibrant sound. After performing last season with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the LA Times declared Ms. Porter "on the cusp of a major career." Elsewhere, her performances have been described as "bold" (Seattle Times) and "virtuosic" (London Times). At 19 years of age, Ms. Porter has already appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Houston Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and with renowned conductors including Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Nicolas McGegan, Ludovic Morlot and Donald Runnicles. Ms. Porter made her professional solo debut at age ten with the Seattle Symphony and her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at age 13.

In June 2016 Simone Porter was featured at the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to John Williams in a solo performance of music from Schindler’s List with Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and members of the American Youth Symphony; this featured program was broadcast nationally on the TNT Network. Summer 2016 also brought her debut at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival performing Mozart with Louis Langree, and return engagements to both the Aspen Festival with Nicolas McGegan and Grand Teton Festival with Donald Runnicles. The 2016-17 season includes Ms. Porter’s debuts with the San Diego Symphony and Charles Dutoit, the Pittsburgh Symphony and Leonard Slatkin, and the New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall. She also enjoys engagements with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Vancouver, Indianapolis, Nashville, Utah and Edmonton Symphonies.

Simone Porter was named a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant in March 2015. This prestigious honor came in a year that included return engagements with the Seattle Symphony and the Aspen Music Festival, her solo debut with Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira, a Ravinia Festival recital debut and travels to Bogota, Columbia to perform with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. The 2015-16 season marked her return to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, this time on the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage with Maestro Dudamel; debuts with the Detroit, Berkeley and Des Moines Symphonies; Baltimore and Hartford Symphony Orchestras; Rochester Philharmonic and Florida Orchestra. NPR’s Performance Today also named her as young-artist-in-residence for fall 2015.

Internationally, Ms. Porter has performed with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, the Northern Sinfonia and the Milton Keynes City Orchestra in the United Kingdom. She has also appeared in Singapore at the 2010 Great Eastern International Kids Performing Festival.

Ms. Porter is an avid chamber musician, having most recently collaborated with violinist James Ehnes at a benefit concert in Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. Additionally, she appeared multiple occasion on the Colburn Chamber Music Society Series at Zipper Hall with violinists Arnold Steinhardt and Scott St. John, on the South Bay Chamber Music Society with violist Paul Coletti, and at the Miami International Piano Festival.

Ms. Porter has been heard on the renowned syndicated NPR radio program From the Top, hosted by acclaimed pianist Christopher O’Riley and featuring America’s best young classical musicians. Her performance in July 2012 marked her third appearance on the program; her first was in 2007 at the age of 11. She has also been featured on the popular national APM radio program Performance Today, recorded live at Aspen’s Harris Hall in 2011. Ms. Porter made her Carnegie Hall debut on the Emmy Award-winning TV show From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall. Other TV appearances include the BBC documentary The World’s Greatest Musical Prodigies, which aired in the United Kingdom in June 2009, and a feature on Seattle’s Kiro 7 TV’s Quarterly Magazine, In Color.

Raised in Seattle, Washington, Ms. Porter studied with Margaret Pressley as a recipient of the Dorothy Richard Starling Scholarship, and was then admitted into the studio of the renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett, with whom she presently studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. Summer studies have included the Aspen Music Festival for seven years, Indiana University's Summer String Academy and the Schlern International Music Festival in Italy.

Simone Porter plays on a 1745 J.B. Guadagnini violin on generous loan from The Mandell Collection of Southern California.