Marilyn McDonald, violin
Marilyn McDonald, a founding member of the Castle Trio and the Smithson and Axelrod quartets has toured worldwide as a chamber musician playing repertoire that runs the gamut from baroque to contemporary.
Violinist and former concertmaster in the Peninsula Music Festival and Boston Baroque, Ms. McDonald’s appearances reflect her versatility: she has been soloist with the Milwaukee and Omaha Symphonies, concerts at the Caramoor Festival, Yale University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Utrecht Festival, among others.
Her students have been international prize winners in the Locatelli, Berkeley Bach, and Naumberg competitions. She has been artist in residence at Boston University and has held visiting professorships at the Eastman School of Music and at Indiana University. She teaches each summer at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, and, this past year, was honored with the “Excellence in Teaching” award at Oberlin.
Ms. McDonald’s recordings are heard on the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Virgin Classics, Decca, Gasparo, Smithsonian, and Telarc labels.