Here’s another classical musician with a passion for bluegrass.
Tessa Lark is a professional violinist who made her professional debut at age 16 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Since then she has performed all over the world, and won honors including the 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant. She picked up a Silver Medal at the 9th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, and won the 2012 Naumburg International Violin Competition.
Her chosen form is chamber music, and she has three recordings of her music, all released in 2019, with a fourth, The Stradgrass Sessions, set to hit in the Spring of 2021. It features her in collaboration with Michael Cleveland and Sierra Hull, among others, and allows her to show off the bluegrass roots she developed growing up in Kentucky. There she learned a love for traditional Appalachian music, which she has had a number of occasions to indulge of late, including working with Mark O’Connor, and her own composition, Appalachian Fantasy, recorded with Amy Lang on piano, which is based on fiddle themes.
Tessa says that she is perfectly comfortable in both genres.
“An album like this is very natural to me. It’s where I live in music. I feel I grew a lot as an artist, as it did require me to listen with even bigger ears and a bigger soul.”
A first single from The Stradgrass Sessions has been released, a duet with Edgar Meyer on the fourth movement of his Double Concerto for Double Bass & Violin: IV. This music video captures the two of them recording the track in the studio.
Finale is available now wherever you stream or download music online.
We look forward to learning more about The Stradgrass Sessions.
