Viola
dawn.smith@project440.org

Dawn Smith, age 24, is a 2007 graduate of The Juilliard School in New York City, where she was awarded the Peter Mennin Award in Music. A native of Miami, FL, Ms. Smith has soloed with international and national orchestras including the Moscow State Symphony in Russia and the New World Symphony in Miami Beach under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas. She has played with renowned jazz musicians Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, and Regina Carter; gospel legends The Clarke Sisters, Donnie McClurkin and Richard Smallwood; and hip-hop superstars “Common” and “Mos Def,” to name a few. Ms. Smith has given performances all over the United States and many locations abroad including Africa, Italy, Russia, France, China, and a number of countries throughout the Caribbean. In 2006, she was invited to perform at the New York Viola Society’s Collegiate Concert held at the Donnell Library, and in 2003 she was one of the featured soloists in the Santa Fe Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra’s summer concert series in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In addition, Ms. Smith was featured in the October 2006 issue of GLAMOUR Magazine, where she was selected as a winner of their “Top 10 College Women” competition for her contributions to the arts. Other awards include a Strings Magazine Scholarship in 2006, a full fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival in 2002, and a Florida First Lady’s Scholarship Award in 2003, which led her to perform in Washington, D.C. for members of the United States Congress. Most recently, Ms. Smith was inducted into the National Scholars Honor Society as a Merit Scholarship recipient.

As an active chamber and orchestral musician, Ms. Smith has appeared with The Ritz Chamber Players in Jacksonville, FL, and performed live with the ensemble on a nationally televised broadcast at the 37th Annual NAACP Image Awards in 2006. She has also performed as stand-in violist with the up-and-coming Harlem Quartet, and is a former member of The Young Eight String Octet. In addition, she is principal violist of Soulful Symphony in Baltimore, MD, and has held both principal and assistant principal viola positions in the Juilliard Orchestra and many community-based orchestras throughout the country.

In spite of a rigorous performance and academic schedule, Ms. Smith has also made time to share her teaching and performance skills with others. She is a member of “Cultures in Harmony” (formerly known as Music for the People), a distinguished organization that promotes international cultural understanding through music, and in the spring of 2006, Ms. Smith traveled to the hurricane-stricken city of New Orleans to help in its rebuilding and teach music to inner-city youth. Ms. Smith currently resides in Washington, D.C., where she is the Orchestra Director at KIPP:DC KEY Academy, the city’s top performing public charter school.

As of May 2009, Ms. Smith successfully completed the Master of Music program at The Juilliard School where she studied with Samuel Rhodes of the Juilliard String Quartet. Some of her previous teachers include Karen Tuttle, Charles Pikler, Kim Kashkashian, Carol Rodland, Victoria Chiang, Richard Fleischman, and Judith Frishman.