Grammy-winning violinist Yvonne Lam enjoys challenging, delighting, and disarming audiences worldwide with her thoughtful musicianship, technical prowess, and fearless performance aesthetic.
She served as a co-artistic director and violinist/violist of Eighth Blackbird for eight years, performing 50 concerts a year internationally with the groundbreaking chamber ensemble. She has also performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Lexington Philharmonic, the New World Symphony, and the Tasmanian Symphony. In 2017, she co-founded the Blackbird Creative Lab, an intensive tuition-free training program for performers and composers in Ojai, California, as a way to inspire future generations of artists to champion new work and engage audiences with innovative and dynamic performances. In addition to teaching and mentoring at the lab, Yvonne has given lessons, masterclasses and lectures at universities throughout the US in addition to long-term residency activities at the Curtis Institute of Music, the University of Chicago, and the University of Richmond.
Prior to joining Eighth Blackbird, Yvonne served three seasons as Assistant Concertmaster of the Washington National Opera Orchestra and as Associate Concertmaster of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. She has also appeared as soloist with such renowned orchestras as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Auckland Philharmonia. Winner of the silver medal at the 2005 Michael Hill World Violin Competition, Yvonne has also garnered top prizes at the Liana Issakadze International Competition and the Holland-America Music Society Competition. She won the grand prize at the Pasadena Instrumental Competition and first prize at the Bronislaw Kaper Awards, the Arts and Talent Recognition Search festival (sponsored by the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts), and the Donna Reed Foundation Competition. Furthermore, she won prizes for the Best Performance of a Commissioned Work at the Irving M. Klein International String Competition and at the Michael Hill World Violin Competition.
Yvonne is deeply committed to and inspired by artistic collaboration. An avid chamber musician, she toured the east coast with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed at Marlboro Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire, Ravinia Music Festival, Twickenham Fest, Taos Music Festival, and Yellow Barn Music Festival.
Yvonne studied violin and piano at the Colburn School of Performing Arts. She continued her studies for two years at the Peabody Institute, where she studied violin with Victor Danchenko and piano with Boris Slutsky and Brian Ganz. She earned her Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music, and her Master of Music from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Robert Mann.
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