Stephanie Arado

Violinist Stephanie Arado’s career encompasses a wide range of performance and teaching experience. She most recently completed a year of teaching at the Interlochen Arts Academy, an institution she graduated from in 1982. She occupied the Loring M. Staples Chair as Assistant Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1991 to 2013. During the 1995/96 season, Ms. Arado served as Concertmaster of The Colorado Symphony under the baton of Marin Alsop. While in Minneapolis, she maintained a private teaching studio and was a founding member of the Bakken Trio, a premier chamber music organization in the Twin Cities. Through her work with the Bakken Trio she has collaborated with many living composers and commissioned numerous chamber compositions. Ms. Arado continues to serve as a Co-Artistic Director of the Bakken.

Ms. Arado played her first solo recital at the age of eight. She went on to debut with the Chicago Symphony as a 12 year old; following that she has performed as a soloist with symphony orchestras throughout the US, including the Detroit, St. Louis, and Minnesota Orchestras. As a 21-year-old Ms. Arado was the first American ever invited to play with the European Union Youth Orchestra led by Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein. She was also invited to perform as a part of the prestigious chamber music festival Musiktreffen in St. Moritz, Switzerland with Paul Tortelier and Yuri Bashmet, two of the most renowned chamber musicians of the century.

She was born and raised in Chicago. She began playing the violin at the age of five using the Suzuki method with Sister Mary Ricardo of La Grange. She was fortunate to have worked with many fine violin pedagogues in her youth including Paul Rolland, Eugene Gratovich and David Cerrone at the famous Meadowmount School. She spent five summers as a Fellowship student at the Aspen Music School. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music at Western Illinois University (Macomb, IL) studying with Almita and Roland Vamos, and completed her Masters Degree at Juilliard in New York City under the tutelage of Dorothy Delay and Paul Kantor.