Kelly Hall-Thomkins, Violin
Winner of a Naumburg International Violin Competition Honorarium Prize, Concert Artists Guild Career Grant, Sphinx Medal of Excellence and featured in the Smithsonian Museum for African-American History, Ms. Hall-Tompkins is a trailblazing and innovative violin soloist entrepreneur who has been acclaimed by the New York Times as “the versatile violinist who makes the music come alive,” for her “tonal mastery” (BBC Music Magazine) and as New York Times “New Yorker of the Year.” She has appeared as co-soloist in Carnegie Hall with Glenn Dicterow and conductor Leonard Slatkin, in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall with conductor Michael Morgan, recitalist at Lincoln Center, soloist as the Inaugural Artist in Residence with the Cincinnati Symphony, and with the Symphonies of Baltimore, Dallas, Jacksonville, Oakland, Greensboro, recitals in Paris, New York, Toronto, Washington, Chicago, and festivals of Tanglewood, Ravinia, Santa Fe, Gateways, and in France, Germany and Italy. Kelly Hall-Tompkins is currently commissioning 5-time Emmy-winning composer Jeff Beal to write a new violin concerto and the collaboration also features celebrated conductor Leonard Slatkin for premieres of the work beginning in the ’22-’23 season.
At home with genres beyond classical music, Ms. Hall-Tompkins is the first soloist to perform the Wynton Marsalis Violin Concerto after the original dedicatée with over 13 scheduled performances to date, and toured for 5 years with Mark O’Connor. She was “Fiddler”/Violin Soloist of the Grammy/Tony-nominated Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof.Inspired by her experience, she commissioned and developed the first ever Fiddler solo disc of all new arrangements, The Fiddler Expanding Tradition, which is featured alongside her recital in Kiev, Ukraine in the new documentary “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles” on the 55-year history of the musical. Ms. Hall-Tompkins’ Imagination Project was called “groundbreaking” by STRINGS Magazine and has received over 1 million views on YouTube. Actively performing virtually throughout the pandemic, numerous projects include premiering 4 pieces written for her, creating and being invited to unique collaborations, including a new co-composition with Tony-nominated actor Daniel Watts, Echo: Shostakovich in Catharsis with aerial dancer Alexandra Peter and Frisson Films, Gil Shaham’s Gilharmonic, and with WQXR as part of the inaugural Artist Propulsion Lab. As founder of Music Kitchen-Food for the Soul, Kelly Hall-Tompkins is a pioneer of social justice in classical music, bringing top artists in over 100 concerts in homeless shelters coast to coast from New York to Los Angeles, and in internationally in Paris, France.
Ms. Hall-Tompkins is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, recipient of two Honorary Doctorates (Manhattan School of Music and Adelphi University), Distinguished Alumni and Centennial Awards (Eastman School of Music) and is a published author contributor to Music and Human Rights on Routledge Press.
