Clara Lyon
A Pennsylvania native, Clara Lyon is young violin soloist and chamber musician, performing internationally to critical acclaim. As a soloist, she has performed with orchestras in Puerto Rico, France, and the United States, and has played in many of the world’s finest concert halls. She has also collaborated with many of today’s leading professional musicians, including Lucy Shelton, Soovin Kim, Eugene Drucker, Kathy Murdock, Colin Carr, Kurt Muroki, William Purvis, Alan Kay, Frank Morelli, Philippe Aïche, Herre-Jan Stegenga, and Richard Wolfe.
She began studying violin at the age of three as a pupil of her parents, both professional classical musicians. As a student of Yumi Ninomiya Scott, she was a 2004 prizewinner of the NFAA ARTS Awards, and a prizewinner of the International Irving M. Klein Competition. A 2008 graduate of the Juilliard School, Ms. Lyon received her Bachelor of Music degree as a pupil of Glenn Dicterow, and was honored by the use of a Hieronymus Amati violin during her years there. She graduated with a Master of Music degree after only one year at SUNY Stony Brook, and continued her studies there as a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, where she is currently a Staller Fellowship student of Soovin Kim and Phil Setzer. While at Stony Brook, Ms. Lyon was the Teaching Assistant for the Violin Studio, and a winner of the Stony Brook Graduate Concerto Competition.
Devoted to the programming of contemporary music, Clara has performed with various contemporary ensembles, including the Argento New Music Project, the Axiom Ensemble, the Mimesis Ensemble, and the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players. She was the assistant concertmaster for the American stage premier at Tanglewood of Elliot Carter’s only opera, What Next, under Maestro James Levine. She also performs in a duo with her sister, cellist Elizabeth Lyon; their performance of Ravel’s Duo Sonate garnered the sisters the Prix de Chambre at the 2007 Conservatoire Americain de Fontainebleau. During summers, Ms. Lyon has participated in the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, the Conservatoire Americain de Fontainebleau, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Music Academy of the West, the Quartet Program, and Cultures in Harmony, a non-profit organization dedicated to global diplomacy through music.
