Carrie Celeste Kennedy

 

      Award-winning violinist Carrie Kennedy has been the featured soloist with orchestras throughout the United States including the San Antonio, Richardson, University of Southern California, Torrance, Suburban, Brevard Festival, Clear Lake, Westchester, Solano, and Magic Valley Symphonies. She has also performed concerts in 12 states and 11 countries.

       She is currently a member of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale Orchestra, and the New West Symphony. Also a Baroque violinist, Carrie is a member of the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra which performs around the world on period instruments. In addition, she frequently performs with the Pacific Symphony and Santa Barbara Symphony, and has toured with Andrea Bocelli and the Percy Faith Orchestra of Japan. She has appeared in live performances on America’s Got Talent and the American Music Awards, and with popular artists such as Pentatonix, Kurt Elling, Natalie Cole, Earth Wind and Fire, John Legend, Stevie Wonder, and Sara Bareilles. She has also recorded music for many motion pictures, television shows, and records. Some of her film credits include X-men and Transformers; TV credits include Mozart in the Jungle, Empire and American Dad and record credits include Daft Punk, Celine Dion, Adele, Fall Out Boy, and Neil Diamond. She also appeared in Joe Wright’s motion picture “The Soloist” as a Juilliard violin student.

      Ms. Kennedy has won numerous awards including 1st place in the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artists Competition with two years of concert engagements and 1st place in the American String Teachers Association Competition.

      Carrie is an alumnus of intensive chamber music programs at Tanglewood and Amelia Island Music Festivals where her quartet was coached by the American, Guarneri, Emerson, and Takacs quartets. She is currently the first violinist and founding member of the Fiato Quartet (www.fiatoquartet.com), which performs concerts throughout Southern California and has also played a concert tour of Costa Rica.

      Some highlights of Kennedy's summer festival studies include serving as concertmaster for the Tanglewood Orchestra under Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos where her performance in Strauss's Ein Heldenleben was broadcast live on New York's WQXR. She studied at the International Holland Music Sessions with Hermann Krebbers, the Santander Master Courses in Spain with Zakhar Bron, and the London Master Classes with Gyorgy Pauk where she was chosen to have her lesson filmed by Online Classics for a television documentary on the master classes. 

      Carrie holds a Master of Music degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she studied with Pamela Frank and Ani Kavafian, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Southern California with Robert Lipsett.

      She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband and fellow violinist, Joel Pargman.