Michi Wiancko, violin/composer
Sculpting a diverse musical life for herself as a violinist, composer, arranger, and song-writer, Michi Wiancko has been described in Gramophone magazine as an "alluring soloist with heightened expressive and violinistic gifts." She made her solo debuts with the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and made her NY recital debut in Carnegie’s Weill Hall after winning representation by Concert Artists Guild in 2002. In 2007, Michi was featured on the cover of Symphony magazine, and in 2011 she released an album on Naxos of the violin works of French composer and violin virtuoso Émile Sauret, which had never before been recorded.
A busy collaborator and chamber musician, Michi has performed with Musicians from Marlboro, the Mark Morris Dance Group, The Knights, Alarm Will Sound, Newspeak, The Yehudim, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Vijay Iyer, and with a group she co-founded: the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO), which will give world premieres of music by Pierre Jalbert and Chris Theofanidis this season.
As a composer, Michi’s most recent projects include commissions from the Enso String Quartet, Sybarite5, and international violin soloist Tai Murray. In November 2015, she will be premiering a new work on the Liquid Music series in St. Paul, MN for a collaborative program with composer Bill Brittelle, and indie rock duo Wye Oak. In 2014, Michi’s work was premiered at the Ecstatic Music Festival by the electro-acoustic composer collective, Bright Wave. Recently, she co-composed as well as mixed and engineered the soundtrack to a film written and directed by John Magary and starring Josh Lucas called The Mend. The film was profiled by Time magazine as one of the Top 10 films at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival.
As an arranger, Michi has worked closely with the band Wye Oak, re-imagining their songs for electro-acoustic ensemble. She has also arranged for the band EL VY (comprised of Brent Knopf and The National's Matt Berninger), for an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Michi’s “re-composition” of Geminiani’s “La Follia” has been performed across the country by ECCO, which also released a celebrated recording of it on E1 Records. The piece has since been performed by many other groups including Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Arkansas Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Harvard Chamber Orchestra, Burlington Chamber Orchestra, The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, and many youth orchestras throughout the country and in Brazil and Colombia.
As a song-writer, Michi has recorded, toured, and created popular self-directed music videos under the name Kono Michi, and has performed her original works throughout the east coast and the UK. She premiered her critically-acclaimed album, “9 Death Haiku,” at Symphony Space’s Thalia Theater in New York, and The Strad described her sound as “intriguing and exquisitely beautiful…music that breaks through the pop classical barrier.” Though she is taking a temporary hiatus from Kono Michi to focus on composing and collaborating, she plans to revive her Kono Michi projects in the following season.
Michi splits her time between Brooklyn and a hill in Western Massachusetts with her partner and their baby daughter. Raised in San Clemente, CA, Michi started playing the violin at the age of 3. She holds a B.Mus. in performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with the Donald Weilerstein and Robert Mann, respectively. Her early teachers include Sharon Holland and Haroutune Bedelian.
