Violinist Lili Sarayrah was raised in the unusual combination of Amman, Jordan and Knoxville, Tennessee. A graduate with High Distinction of the Eastman School of Music/University of Rochester as a student of Charles Castleman, she earned a Bachelor of Music Degree in Violin Performance, an Arts Leadership Program Certificate, a Literary Translation Studies Certificate (Arabic-English), and completed the tuition-free Kauffman Entrepreneurial Year Program to design a long-term educational chamber music residency with ROCmusic, an El Sistema-inspired music education program. Lili also earned a Master of Music Degree from Bard College with a full scholarship and stipend, including a capstone project as Education Coordinator for Cuerdas para Cali, a summer string workshop collaborating with students in Cali, Colombia.
She has appeared with the Amman Symphony Orchestra, the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, the Aspen Summer Music Festival Orchestra, the Bard Music Festival, the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, the Binghamton Philharmonic, the Castleman Quartet Program, Ensemble Evolution at the Banff Centre, Ensemble Signal, the Grafenegg Festival (Austria), the International Contemporary Ensemble, June in Buffalo, the Lincoln Center Festival, New Music On The Point, the Nu Deco Ensemble, OSSIA New Music, NYC’s the Shed, the Syracuse Symphony, and Yale’s Norfolk New Music Festival. She made her solo debut with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra at age 11 and has also appeared as soloist with the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, The Orchestra Now, and the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra as well as in masterclasses for Rachel Barton Pine, Jorja Fleezanis, and Irvine Arditti. Additional highlights include performing as concertmaster at Jazz in Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as principal second in Carnegie Hall, performing in National Sawdust and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and leading the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra for the Swiss premiere of Stockhausen’s ‘Inori’ in Lucerne Hall, as well as on tour in the Paris and Berlin Philharmonies. Conductors she has worked with include Marin Alsop, Peter Eötvös, JoAnn Falletta, Neeme Järvi, Marcelo Lehninger, Brad Lubman, Fabio Luisi, Simon Rattle, Gerard Schwarz, Steven Schick, and Leonard Slatkin.
An accomplished chamber musician, Lili has performed in masterclasses for the Cavani, Pacifica, Parker, St. Lawrence and Ying Quartets. She received the Messinger Chamber Fellowship to design an educational residency centered around chamber music and subsequently received the Celentano Excellence in Chamber Music Award. She performed in the Historic Hudson Chamber Music Series for three years to raise awareness for the need to restore historical homes in the Hudson Valley. She has been awarded a chamber music residency at Avaloch Farm Music Institute and is on the faculty for the Chamber Music Institute formerly in residence at the University of Maine and now in residence at Castleton University. A proud advocate of new music, she has worked with composers Martin Bresnick, Chaya Czernowin, David Felder, Michael Gordon, Georg Friedrich Haas, Vijay Iyer, Steve Reich, Nils Vigeland, and Julia Wolfe in addition to countless emerging composers. As a student and member of Sound ExChange, Lili co-curated a $100,000 Creative Collision grant from the Farash Foundation to explore the intersection of education, technology, and the arts in Rochester, NY. A graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy with High Distinction and the Excellence in English Award, she was awarded the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship, is a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society and is a recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Prize. In 2019, Lili was the first Social Coordinator for the Marlboro Music Festival.
Recent engagements included performing with the Nu Deco Ensemble in Miami and touring with Lincoln Center Stage. CV available upon request.
