Department of Music

Becca Kasdan is currently a Resident Musician at Community MusicWorks and a Teaching Associate at Brown University in Providence, RI. At CMW, Becca performs as a member of the MusicWorks Collective, teaches violin lessons, and actively participates and coordinates community engagement projects and initiatives. Becca received her Doctor of Musical Arts in Violin Performance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied with Meg Freivogel of the Jupiter String Quartet and served as the Violin Teaching Assistant. Previously, Dr. Kasdan studied with Violaine Melancon at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University where she received her MM and BM in Violin Performance.

Deeply passionate about chamber music, Becca has worked closely with members of the Juilliard, Jupiter, Emerson, Chiara, Orion, Ying, Brentano, and Borromeo String Quartets among others. She has performed for several distinguished artists including Midori Goto, Bruno Eicher (Assistant Concertmaster MET), Axel Strauss, and Stefan Milenkovich. Becca has also been a Violin Fellow at several summer music festivals including the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Manchester Music Festival, and the Next Festival of Emerging Artists. As a chamber musician and orchestral player, she has collaborated with many esteemed musicians including David Ying, Michael Kannen, Yael Weiss, Benjamin Zander, David Zinman, and Leon Fleischer.

A passionate and dedicated teacher, Becca is a violin faculty member at Luzerne Music Center’s Senior Session in New York and the Easton Chamber Music Festival in Massachusetts. She has presented masterclasses at the Paul Rolland String Pedagogy Workshop, American String Teacher Association’s National Conference, Tonebase Violin, Virginia Tech, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, DePauw University School of Music, and the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Previously, Becca was a Core Teaching Artist with Apollo’s Fire- the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra in Matteson, IL and Coordinator and Violin Instructor for the Illinois Community Music Academy.

In 2023, Becca collaborated with the international exhibit Violins of Hope to present her Doctoral Lecture Recital, Imagining New Possibilities for 21^st-Century Classical Music Performance: Drawing Inspiration from the Berlin Cabarets of the Weimar Republic. Joined by co-founder Avshalom Weinstein, Becca performed a recital on violins restored and recovered from the Holocaust. The concert featured dancers, musicians, visual artists, and puppeteers from seven countries and a performance of two world premieres.

In addition, Becca is extremely devoted to bringing music into the community. She served as the first co-director of the Peabody String Sinfonia, a conductor-less string ensemble at Peabody Conservatory that performs exclusively at community venues. Becca has also been on a discussion panel with Midori discussing community engagement and outreach in the 21^st century. Currently, Becca is on the Board of Trustees for the Volunteer Musicians for the Arts in Boston, MA where she received a Community Leadership Award in 2021. Becca Kasdan is the 2018 recipient of the Johns Hopkins President’s Commendation for Achievement in the Arts, the Grace Clagett Ranney Prize in Chamber Music, the String Achievement Award from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and is a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda and Phi Kappa Phi’s prestigious music guilds. For more information on upcoming events/concerts, teaching, and community engagement, please follow at www.beccakasdanviolin.com.