Sumner T. McKnight Chair

Gina DiBello assumed the Minnesota Orchestra’s principal second violin post in 2008 after three seasons as a member of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s first violin section. She has performed works of Berkeley, Beethoven, Hindemith, Fauré, Brahms and Greenstein at Orchestra chamber concerts, and in February 2010 she made her solo debut with the Orchestra, performing Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto under conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. The following month she appeared as soloist at Inside the Classics concerts titled “A Celebration of the Seasons.” At Sommerfest 2011 she again soloed with the Orchestra, playing Mozart’s Fifth (Turkish) Violin Concerto. During the 2011-12 season she performed two works on the Chamber Music at MacPhail series: Mozart’s Quartet for Oboe and Strings, and Schubert’s Octet for Winds and Strings.

DiBello has performed solos with ensembles including the Pine Bluff and Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestras, the Cleveland Pops and Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestras, and the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings. Her passion for chamber music has led her to participate in many Twin Cities-area chamber music series including Music in the Park and the Bakken Trio. An advocate for contemporary music, she is a founding member of the collective New Music Detroit, in connection with which she has collaborated with emerging composers such as Nico Muhly, Alexandra du Bois and Marc Mellits, and has participated in the group’s annual 12-hour marathon, Strange Beautiful Music.

DiBello can be heard on an Albany Records CD, The Harpsichord in the New Millennium, a collaboration with composer and harpsichordist Asako Hirabayashi that features new works Hirabayashi has written for violin and harpsichord. In another project, DiBello has recorded new chamber music by Kalevi Aho with Minnesota Orchestra Music Director Osmo Vänskä and other Orchestra string principal players, to be released on the BIS label.

DiBello, a Chicago native, was first inspired to study music by her parents, both professional musicians: her father is a bassist with the Chicago Symphony and her mother a violinist with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. She received early training at the Music Institute of Chicago, studying with Desiree Ruhstrat. She next attended the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Juilliard School in New York, where she studied with David Cerone, Linda Cerone and Joel Smirnoff. She also counts William Preucil, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Peter Salaff and Geoffrey Applegate among her principal teachers and influences.