Praised for her versatility and creativity, American violist Renate Falkner leads an active career as an educator, recitalist, and orchestral and chamber musician, performing across the U.S. and abroad. Equally at home on both modern and baroque viola, she performs regularly with groups such as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, and Artis-Naples, and is a former member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. As a baroque violist, she has performed with Boston Baroque, Tafelmusik, the Yale Collegium Players, and Baltimore’s Pro Musica Rara.
A frequent chamber music collaborator, Dr. Falkner is Artistic Director of the Charm City Chamber Players, an ensemble designed to highlight original repertoire and transcriptions featuring the rich, dark sound of multiple violas and cellos. Having a keen interest in chamber music featuring the viola in more prominent roles, she has been a guest artist with the Fontenay Chamber Players and also frequently collaborates with colleagues in trios for flute, viola and harp or guitar. She has shared the stage alongside such artists as violinist Erick Friedman, violist Jesse Levine, harpists Rita Costanzi and Kayo Ishimaru, oboist Joe Robinson, flutists Sergio Pallottelli and Rhonda Cassano, and guitarist Jose Lezcano. She has been heard in venues as diverse as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book Library, and in orchestras at Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and across the country.
Summer appearances abroad have included the Verbier Festival, Switzerland, the Spoleto Festival, Italy, international tours with the BSO, and a faculty appointment at the Carvalho Festival of Music in Fortaleza, Brazil. She also performs annually at the Bellingham Festival of Music in Washington. She has recorded for the Chandos, Nimbus, and Rezound music labels.
Dr. Falkner received her undergraduate training at the Oberlin College and Conservatory, earning degrees in both viola and Ancient Greek, studying with Roland Vamos. She completed her graduate studies at the Yale School of Music as a scholarship student and assistant to the late violist Jesse Levine, and holds a doctorate from the Florida State University, under the direction of Pamela Ryan. Her treatise examining York Bowen’s viola music in the context of the English Musical Renaissance was the first to focus entirely on his compositions for viola. Most recently, she has collaborated with violists Nana Vaughn and Karin Brown on a series of virtual workshops entitled Violin2Viola.
Dr. Falkner is an active board member of the American Viola Society, where she has served as Chair of the AVS’s Orchestral Audition Competition and Seminar, the Dalton Research Competition, and presented lectures, and panel discussions. After nearly a decade at the University of North Florida, she and her husband, cellist Steven Thomas, recently relocated to Baltimore, where she joined the faculty of the Peabody Preparatory. Previously on faculty at the George Mason University School of Music, she is currently an Artist Affiliate at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC), where she teaches viola and coaches chamber music.
Teaching
Affiliate Artist
Viola
Education
B.A., B.M. Oberlin College & Conservatory
M.M. Yale University
D.M. Florida State University