Katherine Gradojevich Manker started with the NRO as the Principal Second Violin in 1989. She returned in ’92 and ’93 to act as Concertmaster. Since then, she spent seven seasons as Associate Concertmaster with the North Carolina Symphony before moving to Montréal, Canada. Currently, she is teaching for the McGill Music Conservatory and is an active freelancer, performing and touring frequently with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. As a member of the Adorno Quartet, Ms Manker participated in the Beethoven Project performing the complete cycle of the Beethoven String Quartets numerous times. Ms. Manker spent several years in Southern California regularly performing with the Santa Barbara Symphony and Chamber Orchestra, Opera Pacific, and freelance work in the motion picture, television, and recording industries.
She is a graduate of The Cleveland Institute of Music and continued her violin studies at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles as a scholarship student of Robert Lipsett. Ms. Manker has taught for the Preparatory Department of The Cleveland Institute of Music, Colburn School of Performing Arts, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was the Artistic Coordinator for Festival Alexandria (Ontario, Canada) from 2007-2010. She plays on a violin made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz in 2013.
The NRO was lucky enough to have Ms Manker back in Breckenridge last summer celebrating Carl Topilow’s 40th season, she recalls, “Over the years I’ve frequently thought a lot about my positive experiences at NRO and working with Carl Topilow. I still remember how quickly Carl was able to take a difficult orchestral passage apart for us, explain the inner workings of the passage and then put it back together so that we could play it with total confidence, needless to say, these passages have been learned for life. (Rite of Spring!!)”