Rebecca FisCher

Praised for her “beautiful tone and nuanced phrasing” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), violinist Rebecca Fischer is sought after as a highly expressive, intuitive performer. As the first-violinist for 18 years with the Chiara Quartet, she toured, recorded the complete string quartets of Johannes Brahms, Béla Bartók and Jefferson Friedman (a Grammy-nominated album), premiered numerous works, and held residencies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harvard University. Versatile as a chamber musician, concertmaster, soloist, and vocalist, Rebecca is one half of The Afield, a multidisciplinary collaboration combining new and original compositions for violin and voice with video and other media. Recent appearances with The Afield include Carnegie Hall, the Atlanta Contemporary Museum, and the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe. Rebecca is the concertmaster of Ensemble Baroklyn, a group run by pianist Simone Dinnerstein that specializes in the music of J.S. Bach, and she performs regularly with other groups such as the East Coast Chamber Orchestra.

Rebecca is the Executive Director and Director of Senior Greenwood Music Camp, a chamber music camp for teenage musicians in western Massachusetts. During the year she teaches violin and chamber music at the Mannes School of Music, where she is also String Department Co-chair. She has given masterclasses and run workshops at Carnegie Hall, the Eastman School, The Juilliard School, Rice University, Seoul National University, the University of Michigan, and San Francisco Conservatory, among others, and she served for over a decade on the faculty of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Rebecca holds degrees from Columbia University and The Juilliard School, and her major teachers include Kathleen Winkler, Joel Smirnoff, Masao Kawasaki and members of the Juilliard, Cleveland, Concord and Takács quartets. Her book of essays The Sound of Memory: Themes from a Violinist’s Life was released in 2022. She lives in New York City with her family and two cats, Stevie and Zepp.