Bio : Artists

Joan Griffing : Violin I

Violinist Joan Griffing is the concertmaster of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Orchestra and the Shenandoah Symphony Orchestra. She is also a member of the Virginia Symphony. Griffing earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in music from Indiana University, where she studied with Tadeusz Wronski, and her D.M.A. in violin performance from The Ohio State University. She received chamber music coaching from such artists as Joseph Gingold, Janos Starker, James Buswell, the Fine Arts String Quartet, and the Tokyo String Quartet. In the spring of 1999, she premiered a violin concerto written for her by Terry Vosbein, composer-in-residence at Washington and Lee University. She has performed as concertmaster with the AIMS Festival Orchestra in Austria and Italy as well as with the Coronado, Grand Teton, Norfolk, and Spoleto festivals in this country. From 2003-2004, Dr. Griffing spent the year in Atlanta studying Baroque violin and performing with the Baroque ensemble Ritornello. Her recent international appeappearances include a three-week tour of Taiwan in 2004 with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra; a series of guest recitals and master classes in the state of São Paulo, Brazil in May of 2006; a presentation at the International Viola Congress in Adelaide, Australia in June of 2007; and a series of chamber music recitals and master classes in the northeastern part of Brazil in August of 2007 and November of 2008. She is a founding member of and tours regularly with the chamber music group Musica Harmonia, formed to promote peace and cultural understanding through musical collaboration. The group will be recording a CD of chamber music by Gwyneth Walker next year. The CD will include two works composed specifically for Musica Harmonia. Griffing and Musica Harmonia cellist Beth Vanderborgh gave the North American premiere of Double Concerto for Violin and Cello by New Zealand composer Anthony Ritchie in June 2012. Griffing was an Artist-in-Residence at the Brush Creek Arts Foundation in Wyoming in May 2012. Dr. Griffing holds the position of professor of music at Eastern Mennonite University. She was on sabbatical in New Zealand in 2012-13, collaborating with artists at the University of Otago. Dr. Griffing has been on faculty since 1991.