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 (locally and on international tours), 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, Baltimore’s Pro Musica Rara and Quartetto Antico.
A frequent chamber music collaborator, Renate is Artistic Director of the Charm City Chamber Players, an ensemble created 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 is also a member of the Chestertown Piano Quartet, with colleagues from the National Music Festival in Maryland, the Embassy Series String Quartet, based in Washington, D.C., and collaborates regularly with members of the Peabody faculty and the BSO. She has been heard in venues as diverse as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book Library, and in orchestras at Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and London’s Royal Albert Hall for the Proms. Summer appearances abroad have included the Verbier Festival, Switzerland, the Spoleto Festival in Italy, the Carvalho Festival of Music in Fortaleza, Brazil, and the Bellingham Festival of Music, WA. She holds faculty appointments at the National Music Festival in Maryland and the Orfeo Music Festival in Italy. She has recorded on the Chandos, Nimbus, Naxos, and Rezound music labels.
Renate 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. More recently, she has collaborated with violists Nana Vaughn and Karin Brown on a series of virtual workshops entitled Violin2Viola.
Dr. Falkner has served two terms as a board member of the American Viola Society, where she was 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 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
rfalkne1@umbc.edu
Education
B.A., B.M. Oberlin College & Conservatory
M.M. Yale University
D.M. Florida State University