String Soloists

Miranda Cuckson Violin

Recently praised by the New York Times as "a brilliant young performer who plays daunting contemporary music with insight, honesty, and temperament", violinist Miranda Cuckson has a fast-growing reputation as a soloist and chamber musician. Acclaimed for her performances in the United States, Europe, and the Far East, she has performed as soloist with orchestras including, among others, the Indianapolis Symphony, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, the Virginia Symphony and the Long Beach Symphony (both with conductor JoAnn Falletta), the Ashville Symphony, El Paso Symphony, Owensboro Symphony, Lawton Philharmonic, Aspen Festival Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony, Beijing Radio Orchestra, and the Little Orchestra Society of New York at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. She also performed in Germany and Poland as soloist with the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra conducted by Yakov Kreizberg, a tour that culminated in concerts at the Berlin Philharmonie and Berlin Konzerthaus. In March 2008, she makes her concerto debut with the Jerusalem Symphony conducted by Leon Botstein.

Her CD recording with the Czech National Symphony of concertos by Korngold and Ponce was released by Centaur Records (www.centaurrecords.com) to critical praise, and continues to be heard on radio stations across the United States. She has subsequently made two recital CDs of twentieth-century American music for Centaur Records: a lauded disk of music by Ross Lee Finney, and a just-released CD of solo and violin/piano works by Ralph Shapey. For these projects, she was awarded grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music and the Ditson Fund. Her third Copland Fund-sponsored CD will feature the music of Donald Martino.

As recipient of the Juilliard School's Presser Music Award, Ms. Cuckson recently made her recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. Among her other recitals are her New York debut at Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd St Y, and appearances at the New York Public Library's Bruno Walter Auditorium, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Myra Hess concert series in Chicago.

Her chamber music activities include appearances at the Marlboro, Bridgehampton, Focus!, Whynote (France), Kilkenny (Ireland), and Bodensee (Switzerland) festivals, Carnegie Hall's Elliott Carter/ Oliver Knussen workshop, Bargemusic, Music at St. Paul's, the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Americas Society, and the Italian Academy in New York. She has played in the Lincoln Center Summer Festival in chamber works by Salvatore Sciarrino, with John Adams in the inaugural concert of Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, in a tribute to Mario Davidovsky at Symphony Space, in the reopening of the Summergarden series at the Museum of Modern Art, and in collaboration with electronics engineers from IRCAM at Miller Theatre.

A highly active exponent of contemporary classical music, she is involved in a number of ensembles, including the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Sequitur, ACME, Continuum, and the Momenta Quartet. Among Argento's projects have been her performance of the Berg Chamber Concerto in Weill Hall; appearances at the Divertimento Festival/Istanbul International Spectral Music Conference and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and recordings of works by Tristan Murail and Philippe Hurel on the Aeon label. With Continuum, Ms. Cuckson has performed in the Salon des Arts Sofia (Bulgaria), the Roaring Hooves Festival in Mongolia, and as solo violinist in a concert of Arvo Poert's music at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College. She also appears often with New York-based groups and organizations such as the Da Capo Chamber Players, counter induction, the ISCM, Glass Farm Ensemble, Lost Dog Ensemble, Random Access Music, Composers Collaborative, North River Music, Wet Ink, and Music Under Construction.

Ms. Cuckson has worked closely with many of the great composers of the present era. She has played the violin concertos of Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux, and Tobias Picker for the composers themselves, and she has worked with Pierre Boulez. Recently, she was featured as the surprise performer at a gala benefit for the American Composers Orchestra.

She is greatly interested in all forms of art and enjoys collaborative projects such as her appearances as soloist in Barber's Violin Concerto with the touring New York City Ballet, and her performance of the Stravinsky Violin Concerto on the Guggenheim Museum's "Works and Process" series, as part of the Balanchine centennial celebration.

Ms. Cuckson was born into a family of musicians and lives in New York City.  At the age of nine, she began her studies in The Juilliard School's Pre-College Division. She went on to receive her Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate degrees from Juilliard, and graduated with the Richard F. French Prize for best doctoral dissertation. Her teachers included Robert Mann, Dorothy DeLay, Felix Galimir, and Shirley Givens, and she has studied chamber music with Fred Sherry and members of the Juilliard String Quartet. She teaches violin at the Mannes College of Music, Extension and Preparatory Divisions. Her article Ralph Shapey's Dotted Rhythms: "A Violinist’s Point of View" will be published in 2008 in the journal Contemporary Music Review.