Violinist Stephen Waarts’s innate and individual musical voice is establishing him as a firm favorite with audiences in North America and Europe. His prize-winning success at the 2015 Queen Elisabeth Competition—including securing the majority vote of the television audience—has boosted international attention and follows similar accolades at the 2014 Menuhin Competition and the 2013 Montreal International Competition. In 2013, he won the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York, at the age of seventeen. With a voracious appetite for repertoire, the young Dutch-American violinist has already performed over thirty standard, as well as rarely performed, violin concerti and is meanwhile building significant experience in recital as well as in a wide range of chamber music. Recent engagements include the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Brussels Philharmonic, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, and Konzerthausorchester Berlin. He has given highly successful debut recitals at Merkin Concert Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Louvre in Paris. Following the 2015 Kryzowa Music Festival in Poland, he was awarded the Mozart Gesellschaft Scholarship, which will see him work with the Bremer Philharmoniker in the 2016–2017 season. Other forthcoming engagements include the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonie Zuidnederland, a recital at the Tonhalle concert hall in Zürich, and he will also take part in the 2016 Dubrovnik Summer Festival following his appearance at Music@Menlo. Waarts is in his final year of study at the Curtis Institute of Music under Aaron Rosand, having been awarded the Frank S. Bayley Annual Fellowship. His previous teachers include Itzhak Perlman at the Perlman Music Program and Li Lin at the San Francisco Conservatory.