Tessa Lark, 23, holds the BM and MM degrees in Violin Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC), Boston, where she studied from 2006-2012 with Miriam Fried, Lucy Chapman, and Paul Biss.
Tessa, born and raised in Kentucky, started playing violin at age 6, studying with Cathy McGlasson. At age 11, Tessa began 6 years of violin studies with Kurt Sassmannshaus at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (CCM) through the Starling Preparatory String Project.Through June 2006, Tessa was concertmaster of the Starling Chamber Orchestra at CCM, toured southern China with them in 2001, performed with them at Aspen in 2002 and 2004, and performed with them in Germany, Austria, and Russia in 2003 and in London in 2004. Tessa has also played with Narrow Road, a Kentucky Gospel Bluegrass Band. As a member of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, she was Assistant Concertmaster for the Concert Orchestra and a member of Symphony through Spring 2002. Tessa was Concertmaster at the Foster Music Camp at Eastern Kentucky University, attended the Mark O'Connor Fiddle Camp near Nashville in 2000, 2003, 2005, and 2006, attended the Aspen Music School on a New Horizon Fellowship in 2004, and was a scholarship student at the Great Wall Academy in 2005. Tessa is featured in several instructional and performance videos on http://www.violinmasterclass.com/, and has performed twice on the public radio program, From The Top. She was a featured soloist at the Forbidden City Concert Hall with the Beijing Symphony, and was a featured soloist at Music Hall with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in November, 2005. Tessa performed the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra in 2006, the Bruch Violin Concerto with the Peninsula Symphony in 2009, and the Tchaikovsky and Walton Violin Concertos wtih the Santa Cruz Symphony and NEC Symphony, respectively, in 2010.
During the summers of 2007 and 2008, Ms. Lark was performer in residence at the Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Music Festival, Chicago. In the summer of 2009, Tessa played in the finale week of Music in the Vinyards in California and was was in residence at the Yellow Barn Music Festival in Vermont in 2009-11.
In 2006, Tessa won First Place in the Johansen International Strings Competition in Washington, D.C., and in 2008, she won First Place at the Irving M. Klein International String Competition in San Francisco. She was the top American prize winner at the 2009 Michael Hill International Violin Competition in New Zealand, and in 2012 she won the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition in New York.
Ms. Lark currently plays the 1675 Tononi violin on loan to her from the Steans Institute for Young Artists.