Bio : Artists

Diane Phoenix-Neal : Viola

EMF alumna Diane Phoenix-Neal performs regularly as a collaborative chamber musician and as a soloist in addition to her roles as an educator and clinician. She currently teaches violin and viola at Guilford College and is assistant professor of music at Fayetteville State University.  An active performer, she serves as a principal artist with the Carolina Chamber Symphony Players and is a founding member of the chamber ensemble Music Harmonia, which presented its second concert tour to Brazil in 2008. Her performances have taken her to concert stages worldwide, including China, North Africa, and more recently to music festivals in Brazil and to Australia, where she performed for the International Viola Congress in 2007. Highlights of her chamber music and solo recitals include performances at the Eastern Music Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center (New York String Orchestra), Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, and the music festivals of Spoleto, Banff, and Evian (France). Her varied and vibrant solo appearances include performances with the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, the North Carolina Symphony, and the Picardie Orchestra of France. Dr. Phoenix-Neal holds degrees from The Juilliard School, UNC School of the Arts, and UNCG.  Her teachers include violists Sally Peck, William Lincer, and Paul Doktor, violinist Joel Smirnoff, and the Juilliard, Amadeus, and Orion quartets. She served as principal violist of the Juilliard Orchestra and performed with the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra and with the New York Philharmonic.  More recently, she has collaborated in chamber music concerts with Stuart Malino, members of the Orion Quartet, with cellists Lynn Harrell and Gary Hoffman, and with Dmitry Sitkovetsky in the chamber series ?Dmitry Sitkovetsky and Friends.? Formerly the violist of the Joachim Quartet (France), Dr. Phoenix-Neal is the recipient of several top prizes, including awards from UNCG, the Banff International String Quartet Competition, and the French Foreign Ministry. This is her 15th season at EMF.