Emily Grissing is presently a section cellist with the Winston-Salem Symphony (NC).  She received a Professional Artist Certificate in cello at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) in 2014, where she studied with Dr. Brooks Whitehouse.  Her life-long passion for all of the performing arts was well served growing up in a community rich in the arts. A self-taught pianist at age two, Emily enjoyed Suzuki violin lessons at age three.  By middle school, Emily’s desire to accomplish music across many genres led to intensive studies in music theory, jazz, recorder, voice, guitar, cello, flute, piccolo, double bass, viola, and French Horn. Roles in school musical theater as a young teen and playing with a community orchestra strengthened Emily’s leadership skills. By middle school’s end, Emily was a seasoned principal cellist and advancing flutist in demand as a collaborative artist, and placing in a variety of competitions. At age 17, after accepted as a special student member of her first professional orchestra, Emily realized it was the cello, not the flute, she was to focus on for her career direction.

 

Emily has performed as a cello soloist at the Kennedy Center and the Eastman Theatre, among others.  She is also currently on the sub-lists with the Erie Philharmonic (PA) and the North Carolina Symphony.  Summers have been with the Eastern Festival Orchestra as a String Scholar Intern, National Repertory Orchestra (NRO), National Orchestral Institute and Festival (principal positions), Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, and Chautauqua Music School Festival Orchestra, to name a few. In June 2011, Emily was honored to become a student at a Conducting Symposium at the Sibelius Academy working with conductors Peter Ettrup Larsen and Paula Holcomb.  There she conducted the Finnish National Guard’s Band and a wind chamber group of Sibelius Academy students.  Receiving a Master’s (also from UNCSA) in 2013, and a Bachelor’s in cello performance, summa cum laude, from SUNY Fredonia, Emily Grissing’s other principal cello teachers include Dr. Natasha Farny, Mary Ann Wukovitz and David Geber.   While Emily thrives on her classical training and is deeply passionate performing operatic works, she treasures all forms of music genre and a wide variety of collaborations with instrumentalists, singers, dancers, composers, writers, visual artists and filmmakers alike.

 

This past summer 2014, Emily attended Aspen Music Festival and School with a full Kenan Fellowship, where she performed in a masterclass with Alisa Weilerstein.