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Isabella Brown

violin

About this Artist

Isabella Brown is an American violinist who studied at the Colburn Conservatory of Music with Martin Beaver. As a result of winning first prize in the CSO Young Artist's Competition, she made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2022. In 2019, Isabella was awarded a top prize in the Cooper International Violin Competition and had the privilege of debuting with the Cleveland Orchestra at the age of sixteen. Her performance was praised by critics who wrote that Isabella exhibited “complete control,” “soared out nicely over the big orchestra,” and “delivered an intensely lyrical and scintillating performance of the Dvořák Violin Concerto.”

She was also awarded First Prize in the Professional Division at the 2020 Chicago International Music Competition, from a pool of over 400 musicians from 22 countries. Prior to this, Isabella received First Place in numerous competitions, including the Alexander and Buono International String Competition, the Asian American International Music Competition, the Rockville Competition for Piano and Strings, the Chinese Fine Arts Society Music Festival in Honor of Confucius Competition, the Sejong Music Competition, the Open Junior String Division of the MYA Walgreens National Concerto Competition, and the DePaul Concerto Festival for Young Performers. Additionally, Isabella was named a 2019 National YoungArts Foundation Winner, and she won the 2019 Lakeview Orchestra Competition, the 2019 DuPage Symphony Orchestra Competition, and the 2020 Kishwaukee Symphony Montzka Young Artist Competition. She was also a recipient of the 2022 NFMC Oscar Valentin Violin Award.

Isabella made her solo debut with orchestra at the age of ten, performing with the Capital Symphonic Youth Orchestra on the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater stage, and has gone on to play with the Oistrakh Symphony Orchestra, the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra, the New North Shore Symphony Orchestra, the Northbrook Symphony Orchestra, the Lakeview Orchestra, the DuPage Symphony Orchestra, the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra, the Kishwaukee Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, she has been featured on Chicago’s WFMT and on Cleveland’s WCLV, appeared in both the Dame Myra Hess series in Chicago and the Alden Theater Young Soloist Series in Virginia, and has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Chicago Cultural Center, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Chicago’s Harris Theater, Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall, and Chicago’s Symphony Center.

Isabella previously studied violin with Almita and Roland Vamos as a Scholarship Fellow at the Music Institute of Chicago Academy. She is very thankful to be playing on a Lorenzo Guadagnini violin, generously on loan to her from the Colburn School.