Amy Semes is a vibrant violinist, whose expertise spans the great solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire. She has performed in many great venues such as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall (David Geffen Hall), and Alice Tully Hall in New York City, The Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., The Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, St. Petersburg’s New Mariinsky Theater, and London’s Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. She has performed with Valery Gergiev, Itzhak Perlman, Peter Oundjian, Nicholas McGegan, and Andris Nelsons.
Amy has performed as soloist with orchestras including The Bucks County Symphony, The Newark, Delaware Symphony, the Old York Road Symphony, The Ambler Symphony, The Delaware County Symphony. She performed with The Shanghai Philharmonic, live at The Shanghai Concert Hall, and on “The Weekly Radio Broadcast”. Amy has also performed with The Macau Youth Orchestra as part of their 10th Anniversary Concert. Amy played on The famous NPR show, “ From the Top” a soloist with The Ocean City Pops, live at The Music Pier in Ocean City, New Jersey, and later on the radio broadcast. She has also been heard in Hong Kong on RTHK’s “The Children’s Hour”, in Philadelphia on WRTI’s “Crossover” and WHYY’s “President’s Dinner”.
Amy has performed extensively as a chamber musician. Recent highlights are Schubert’s Octet at Chamberfest 2017, Beethoven Septet, and Bartok Contrasts at The Juilliard School. In 2013 Amy performed the Mendelssohn Octet at The Russian Embassy. Amy was featured on “From the Top”, aired from Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh with the Temple Prep Honors Quartet. As a part of the Snitzer Quartet, she performed at venues throughout Metropolitan Philadelphia and at Crescendo: Musicians on the Rise at the Princeton Library. As part of The Auger Piano Quartet, she played at The Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. On behalf of Settlement Music School, Amy’s quartet performed for Yannick Nezet-Seguin as an introduction to Philadelphia’s rich and varied musical life. Amy has performed extensively with her three sisters, all Juilliard trained violinists, including a concert at The Academy for Performing Arts in Hong Kong.
Amy has always thrived on collaboration with other musicians. As such, she has been a dedicated orchestral player. She has played several concerts with The New World Symphony in Miami during the 2016-2017 season. She performed as Concertmaster of The Tanglewood Music Center under Thomas Ades, performing Ades’ own work, Polaris. She has also led The Juilliard Chamber Orchestra as Concertmaster and been a Principal in orchestras such as The Juilliard Opera and Music Academy of The West. During several summers at The Aspen Music Festival, Amy performed in The Aspen Festival Orchestra and The Aspen Chamber Symphony. Amy was a part of the inaugural year of The National Youth Orchestra of Carnegie Hall, representing the USA and traveling to Russia and England as a musical ambassador.
Amy has a commitment to community engagement as has been her practice for the entirety of her career. As a Gluck Community Music Fellowship recipient, she has performed in hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and senior centers across the five boroughs of New York City. She has performed benefit concerts for initiatives such as JoyJthrough The Blessed Sacrament Church on the Upper West Side as a way of providing for the poor in the neighborhood where she herself lives. At her initiative, she has organized concerts to benefit Tune Up Philly, a group that provides music lessons to underprivileged children in Philadelphia. She has also performed a concert to benefit Hopital Sacre Coeur, a private hospital in Haiti.
Amy started the violin at age four. Currently, she is a scholarship Master of Music student at Rice University, under the tutelage of Kathleen Winkler. She received her Bachelor of Music Degree from The Juilliard School in 2017, also with scholarship support. Prior to Juilliard, she was at the Juilliard Pre-College Division. She was Concertmaster of the Youth Chamber Orchestra at Temple University Music Prep, where she was a recipient of a Dorothy Richard Starling Violin Scholarship. She studied chamber music at Settlement Music School in Philadelphia where she received the Auger and Snitzer Scholarships. Amy’s teachers have included Naoko Tanaka, of The Juilliard School, Choong-Jin Chang, Principal Violist of The Philadelphia Orchestra, Kimberly Fisher, Principal Second of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Daniel Han, also of The Philadelphia Orchestra.
In addition to playing music, Amy loves animals, being outdoors, and running long distance races.