“One of the most respected classical violinists in the world” (Woman Around Town), Stephanie Chase is in demand as soloist with eminent orchestras that have included the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, and London Symphony Orchestra, in inspiring performances acclaimed for their “elegance, dexterity, rhythmic vitality and great imagination” (Boston Globe) as well as “stunning power” (Louisville Courier-Journal), “matchless technique and flawless intonation” (BBC Music Magazine).  Her latest appearance at Carnegie Hall was in May, 2008 as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.

Internationally recognized as “one of the violin greats of our era” (Newhouse News), concerts by Stephanie Chase performances are met with  rave reviews by audiences and critics alike.  Most recently, her rendition of Elgar's Violin Concerto with the Louisville Orchestra was selected as a “Classical Act of the Decade” (December 2009) and the New York Times noted that "the fine violinist Stephanie Chase was an elegant soloist" with the American Classical Orchestra (November 2009).  A Classical Net Review exclaimed that “Stephanie Chase plays the bejabbers out of Zigeunerweisen, earning a well-deserved (and unsexing) ‘Bravo!’” (December 2009).

Stephanie Chase is a top medalist of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.  Among the conductors with whom she has collaborated are Zubin Mehta, Leonard Slatkin, Herbert Blomstedt, Marin Alsop, and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.

Renowned for her “rich, passionate tone, dead-true intonation throughout, and virtuosity galore” (Gramophone), Ms. Chase is equally at home in the virtuoso's repertoire, historically-informed performance practice and contemporary music, and she offers “refreshingly stylish” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) interpretations of an attractive and diverse repertoire spanning the Baroque to the late-20^th century and consisting of over sixty concerti and major works for violin and orchestra.

In addition to the standard concerti, Ms. Chase performs those by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ellen Taafe Zwilich, Erich Korngold, Karl Szymanowski, William Walton, Julius Conus, Henri Vieuxtemps, Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, and Kreisler’s one-movement version of Paganini’s Violin Concerto.  She also offers lesser-heard but compelling works such as Saint-Saëns’ “La Muse et le Poète” (for violin, cello and orchestra), Borodin’s “Nocturne” (from his famed string quartet, arranged for violin and orchestra by Rimsky-Korsakov), and Chausson’s “Poème” for violin and orchestra.

Recordings  by Ms. Chase are celebrated for her “technical control, beautiful sound, rhythmic flexibility, unerring taste, and natural stylistic affinity” (Strings Magazine) and have been awarded the highest possible ratings by Cambridge University Press and BBC Music Magazine, featured by Classic CD as “Record of the Month,” and selected by Stereophile as a “Record to Die For.”

Stephanie Chase’s interest in musicology and performance practice is reflected in her own original cadenzas for concerti by Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn.  She is a noted interpreter of Beethoven's music and the first violinist ever to record Beethoven's majestic Violin Concerto (featuring her own cadenzas) on original instruments.  This landmark recording is deemed “one of the twenty most outstanding performances in the work's recorded history” by Robin Stowell in ‘Beethoven: Violin Concerto’ (Cambridge University Press).  Writing for BBC Music Magazine, H.C. Robbins Landon declared that “Stephanie Chase has a great sense of style, matchless technique and flawless intonation.”

Her recent concert performance of this work (with the Portland Symphony) inspired a poet to write:

“with the apparent ease that accompanies great virtuosity..... Stephanie, Beethoven and the orchestra, striving toward Truth celebrate the highest image of the human.”  (Gleanings and Giftings - H.D. Wagener)

Born in Illinois, Stephanie Chase is the daughter of two musicians, the noted arranger and composer Bruce Chase and violinist Fannie (Paschell) Chase, and the granddaughter of violinists.  She made her first public appearance at the age of two years and within a few years was nationally recognized as a child prodigy through appearances on television and performances in the Chicago area.  Her debut with the Chicago Symphony followed her first prize win, at age nine, in its Youth Competition. That same year she was featured performing a Mozart Concerto on WGN’s “Artist’s Showcase,” in a program that was awarded the illustrious George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in television broadcasting.  Further studies with Sally Thomas of the Juilliard School ensued and, following two appearances at age thirteen on Sir David Frost’s television interview program, Ms. Chase embarked on a major concert career, touring as a teenager across the United States and Canada and appearing as soloist with orchestras that included the Chicago, St. Louis, National and American Symphony Orchestras.  Her Carnegie Hall debut was at age eighteen, in which she appeared as soloist in the retirement concert of the eminent conductor-educator Leon Barzin.

Ms. Chase furthered her artistry through studies with the legendary Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux, who remained her mentor until his death.  She also studied chamber music at the renowned Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont with many of the 20th-century greatest musicians, including Rudolf Serkin, Felix Galimir, Misha Schneider, Rudolf Firkusny and Marcel Moyse.

Stephanie Chase’s triumphant, award-winning performances at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow led to international fame and concert tours in twenty-five countries, including an historic tour of the People’s Republic of China as soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic on its first ever trip to the PRC.

Ms. Chase's most recent recordings include albums of music for violin and piano by Rudolf Friml and Viteslavá Kaprálová, and virtuoso works for violin and guitar by Mauro Giuliani, performed on period instruments (forthcoming).  Her latest recording is a collection of violin music from the libraries of her parents and grandfathers for Koch International Classics, in collaboration with pianist Warren Jones and scheduled for a 2010 release.  In addition to the Koch International Classics label, Ms. Chase has recorded for Cala Records, Harmonia Mundi, MSR and Paulus.

Stephanie Chase is also applauded through her concert performances in the dual roles of violin soloist and conductor. Concerts she has conducted with the Jupiter Symphony, The Chamber Orchestra of the Spheres, and the Symphony by the Sea (MA) have been extremely well received, and she has led performances from the solo violin position with orchestras throughout the United States and Mexico, including the String Orchestra of New York City, The American String Project and the New Century Chamber Orchestra.

Her music arrangements are performed to rave reviews in venues that include Carnegie Hall.  “A Fantasy about Carmen,” a work she created for string orchestra (inspired by Sarasate’s virtuoso for violin and orchestra featuring Bizet’s music from Carmen), was premiered in 2005 in Zankel Hall in a performance by the Perlman Chamber Orchestra conducted by Itzhak Perlman, who are currently performing her arrangement of Sarasate’s “Zigeunerweisen.”  In a concert review (yourobserver.com, January 6, 2010), critic June LeBell noted: “But the real energy came with the finale: a clever arrangement by violinist Stephanie Chase of Sarasate’s “Zigeunerweisen.”  This, like Chase’s arrangement of the “Carmen Fantasy,” used by the PMP Chamber Orchestra in past years, is a blockbuster of a piece… eliciting cheers, laughter and total delight from the audience.”

Also renowned as a chamber musician, Ms. Chase is a guest artist at many prestigious festivals – including Caramoor, Bargemusic, Cabrillo, Kuhmo (Finland), Nuits de Bourgogne, and Sommerfest (Minnesota Orchestra) – and has collaborated with musicians that include Lydia Artimiew, Yuri Bashmet, Jean-Ives Thibaudet, Sara Davis Buechner, Dominique LaBelle, Jon Nakamatsu, Marc-André Hamelin, and members of the Daedalus, Muir, Guarneri and Tokyo String Quartets.  In July 2010 she replaced an artist on one day's notice for three concerts at the Bravo! Vail Festival, which included the Colorado premiere of Joan Toer's new Piano Quartet. She is a co-founder and Artistic Director of the acclaimed Music of the Spheres Society, which presents chamber music concerts and lectures that explore the links between music, philosophy and the sciences.  As a former artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, she toured internationally with the group and is featured on several recordings made by the Society in a variety of repertoire.

Stephanie Chase is lineally descended (tenth generation) from Aquila Chase, a Massachusetts Bay colonist who arrived from England in 1639 and settled first in Hampton, NH and then Newbury, MA.  The founder of one of New England's most illustrious family lineages, Aquila's descendents include jurists, founders of colleges, bishops, senators and a Supreme Court Chief Justice, Salmon Portland Chase (for whom Chase Bank is named).

Ms. Chase is frequently the subject of profiles in newspapers and journals, most recently including The Epoch Times (October 14, 2009) and Woman Around Town, (November 16, 2009).

Stephanie Chase teaches violin at New York University’s Steinhardt School and at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College.  She is frequently invited to perform master classes by prestigious institutions that include Juilliard, Southern Methodist University, Mannes, San Francisco Conservatory, Shepherd School at Rice University, Milwaukee Conservatory, and the Institute for Strings, and has judged numerous violin concerto competitions at The Juilliard School.

Ms. Chase resides in New York City with her husband, Stewart Pollens, the award-winning musical instrument expert.  The founder and director of Violin Advisor, LLC, he was formerly the conservator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Among her current hobbies are learning chess, studying the "music of the spheres" and Stradivari violins, researching her genealogy, and strength training.

©Stephanie Chase, 2010. All Rights Reserved.