Gabrielle Painter

Gabrielle Painter

When music lessons were handed out at Gabby’s school, little did she think that years later she would be playing the violin on concert platforms around the world. Not least because she had wanted to learn the clarinet..
Gabby went on to study with Diana Cummings at the Royal Academy of Music and as a scholarship student with Mitchell Stern at the Manhattan School of Music and the State University of New York at Stony Brook where she gained her Doctorate of Musical Arts Degree.

Gabby is a member of Academy of Saint Martins in the Fields and is the Assistant Leader of the City of London Sinfonia. Her concerto performances range from Beethoven to Szymanowski, Prokofiev and Lou Harrison and recital repertoire includes sonatas by Enesco, Busoni and Shostakovich.  A passionate chamber musician, she has been a guest artist at the Banff Centre for the Arts and in numerous concert series including the London Festival of Chamber Music, Cathedral of Saint John the Divine (NY), the Mostly Music Series (Chicago) and concerts throughout the US, Europe and the UK.  She has performed as guest leader and in principal positions for some of Britain’s top chamber and symphony orchestras working closely with artists including Joshua Bell, Murray Perahia, Yehudi Menuhin, Richard Hickox, Martyn Brabbins and Ryan Wigglesworth. Gabby has also been heard on Classic FM, BBC radio, Lyric FM, CRI and New World Records. Classical Source has described her playing as ‘rapt and intense’ with an ‘earthy lustrous tone’.

Gabby is an equally dedicated teacher and taught for many years at the Junior Department of Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at the Senior Department of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She devised and ran the Strings Teaching Skills programme at the Royal Welsh College and delivers annual lectures about teaching at the Royal Academy of Music. It is with great interest that Gabby is learning about Suzuki through her daughter Maddie, who is studying with Karina MacKalpine.