Kupchynsky, Melanie

She is a violinist born in East Brunswick, New Jersey to a family where her father Jerry was a music teacher and her late sister Stephanie was a violin teacher who had been murdered n Greece in 1991. She took her first violin lessons from her father when she was 4 years old and went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees with honors and distinction at the New England Conservatory of Music.

During 1984 and 1985 she was a fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center and orchestras she performed with while a resident in the Boston area include the Boston Pops, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, Opera Company of Boston and as Principal second violin at Springfield (MA) Symphony.

She joined the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as a first violin in 1988 and the following year she became a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Sir Georg Solti being the conductor.

An active chamber musician, she has participated in “citizen Musician” which is the CSO’s outreach program.

Recordings she has performed on include Concert, Highstown High School Auditorium, New Jersey 1973 by Central Jersey Region II Intermediate Orchestra and Central Jersey Region II Intermediate Band, Corigliano – Symphony No. 1, Wagner- Overtures and Preludes, Samuel Barber: The Lovers; Prayers of Kierkegaard and Brahms – Violin Concerto/Sonata No. 3 by Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Christmas in the Aire and Christmas Celeebration by Mannheim Steamroller and Two Different Days by Rob Parton’s Jazztech Big Band.

As a writer she co-wrote Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift gf Great Expectations which is about her father’s musical legacy.

Her husband is Edward Harrison, who is the timpanist of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and they have three children who all play the violin.

Sources:

Kupchynsky, Melanie

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