Violinist Elicia Silverstein, 2020 winner of the BBC Music Magazine Best Newcomer Award has garnered praise on the international stage for her nuanced, bold and insightful performances of repertoire ranging from the 17th to the 21st century.

 

Silverstein is equally at home as a performer on historical and modern instruments, as a soloist with orchestra, giving recitals and playing chamber music. Her “wonderfully inventive” playing (The Strad) and her “highly emotionally intelligent” (Gramophone) approach to music making distinguish Silverstein as one of the most important musical voices of her generation.

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In recent season, Silverstein has performed as a soloist with ensembles including The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Philharmonic Orchestra of North Macedonia, The Kölner Akademie, Barokkanerne, Ensemble Odyssee, the Orquestra Clássica de Espinho, Cathedra Camerata, Tesserae Baroque, and the Steinitz Bach Players in prestigious halls such as the Washington National Cathedral, where she was Artist-in-Residence during the 2019-2020 concert season, Concertgebouw Brugge, the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Teatro Massimo di Palermo, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna and Kings College Chapel.

 

She regularly performers in important European festivals, such as Ravenna Festival, Baroque at the Edge Festival, ZAMUS Early Music Festival, Larvik Barokk, Gloger Festpillene, Festival Duni, Brighton Early Music Festival, the Festival Internacional de Música de Espinho and Bologna Modern. Silverstein’s performances have been broadcast on RAI Radio3 Suite’s La Stanza della musica, WQXR’s Young Artist Showcase, and BBC Radio 3’s In Tune.

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Silverstein is passionate about creating concert and recording programs that “trace the mental circuits and capture and link points distant from each other in place and time,” (cit. Italo Calvino). Notably, her solo album, “The Dreams and Fables I Fashion,” released by Rubicon Classics in 2018 to international critical acclaim, brought together works of the 17th century stylus phantasticus with Bach, Berio and Sciarrino.

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Her love for chamber music has led her to collaborate with artists such as keyboardists Francesco Cera, Richard Egarr, Robert Levin and Patrick Ayrton, violinists Marco Serino and Marco Bianchi, members of the Ebène Quartet, and cellist Mauro Valli and lutenist Michele Passotti, with whom she founded the ensemble Harmonical Miscellany in 2016.

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Born in New York, Silverstein began playing the violin at the age of two. After graduating from the Juilliard School’s pre-college division, she continued her studies at the Colburn School’s Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles as a student of Robert Lipsett and Arnold Steinhardt. She was selected to perform as a soloist with the Colburn Orchestra on numerous occasions.

 

In 2013, Silverstein moved to Europe as the recipient of a Netherland-America Foundation Fulbright grant, earning her Master of Music degree cum laude at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam under the supervision of Vera Beths, Anner Bylsma and Lucy van Dael. She is an affiliate faculty member at the University of Delaware, where she teaches violin, chamber music and historical performance and regularly gives masterclasses in conservatories throughout Europe and the United States.

 

In 2020, she launched a historical performance program at the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with music director Federico Cortese, the first of its kind amongst American youth orchestra organizations. Silverstein plays a J.B.Vuillaume violin crafted in Paris in 1856 (copy of a Guarnieri del Gesù) and on bows made by René-William Groppe, Ralph Ashmead, Gerhard Landwehr and Andrea Proietti.