Tessa Lark, violin/Artistic Director

Tessa is one of the most captivating artistic voices of our time, consistently praised by critics and audiences for her astounding range of sounds, technical agility, and musical elegance. She is in demand as a classical violinist and is a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky.

Highlights of Tessa’s 2024-25 season include returns to the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic, and a debut with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. In recital, she will debut with San Francisco Symphony, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Artist Series of Sarasota. Tessa reprises Michael Torke’s violin concerto, Sky with the Boulder and Colorado Springs Philharmonicas, as well as the West Michigan, Williamsburg, Shreveport, and Tallahassee Symphony Orchestras. As a chamber musician, she will tour across the U.S. with her string trio project with composer-bassist Edgar Meyer and cellist Joshua Roman.

Tessa’s discography includes The Stradgrass Sessions (2023), with an all-star roster of collaborators including Meyer, Jon Batiste, Sierra Hull, and Michael Cleveland, Grammy-nominated SKY (2020), a bluegrass-inspired violin concerto written for her by Michael Torke with the Albany Symphony, Fantasy, her solo debut on First Hand Records (2019), Invention (2019), a violin-bass duo with Michael Thurber, and a live performance recording of Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aries (2021) with the Buffalo Philharmonic.

In addition to her performance schedule, Tessa is the newly minted Artistic Director of the Moab Music Festival, Artistic Director of Musical Masterworks, a chamber music presenter in Old Lyme, CT and champions young aspiring artists through her work as Co-host/Creative of NPR’s From the Top. She plays a ca. 1600 G.P. Maggini violin on loan from an anonymous donor through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.