Laurie Smukler

VIOLIN

Chamber Music Workshop

Violinist Laurie Smukler, praised for her “powerful and deeply affecting” artistry, enjoys a career that spans deeply involved chamber music collaborations, solo performances, artistic directing, and major violin and chamber music teaching. 

Smukler’s recent and upcoming seasons include a wide range of performances, recording projects, and teaching. She serves as Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at The Juilliard School, and as Artistic Director of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival. Her concert appearances include recitals with pianist Robert McDonald of the Juilliard faculty; chamber music as part of the Capital City Concerts series in Montpelier, Vermont; concerti with the young musicians of the Gifted Music School Conservatory in Salt Lake City, Utah; and, with her Juilliard faculty colleague Natasha Brofsky, in New York City performances benefiting Music For Food.

With her husband of over 40 years, Ira Weller, Smukler was a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet. During her eight years as first violinist of the ensemble, it won the Young Concert Artists competition in 1981; presented concerts across the United States; recorded works of Schoenberg, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, and Mozart; and was praised in the New York Times for its “enthusiasm, confidence, and sense of adventure.”  Smukler and Weller also collaborated over many years to present “The Collection in Concert,” a chamber music series at New York’s Morgan Library, which featured repertoire whose original manuscripts were part of the institution’s extensive collection.

Since 1997, Smukler has taught at Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival, whose Artistic Directorship she assumed in 2016.  Among particular highlights over many summers in Blue Hill, was her devoted trio collaboration, with cellist Joel Krosnick and pianist Seymour Lipkin.. Her duo collaborations with Lipkin and Krosnick individually were extensive as well, In recent summers at Kneisel Hall, Smukler has enjoyed annual trio collaborations with beloved younger colleagues Gwen Krosnick, cellist, and Qing Jiang, pianist. As Kneisel’s Artistic Director, she has expanded the Festival in meaningful ways, presenting Continuum concerts featuring collaborations between KH Faculty and alumni; inviting an Alexander Technique practitioner to campus, establishing an annual Music For Food concert to support the food pantry in Blue Hill; and beginning a series, Composers Now, which brings a major living composer to Blue Hill for an annual residency each summer.

Since 2014, Smukler has served full-time on the faculty at Juilliard, where she works with an extraordinary class of undergraduate and graduate-level violinists; coaches serious young chamber music groups and co-directs the String Quartet Survey for entering first-year students. Prior to her work at Juilliard, Smukler taught at The Manhattan School of Music, Mannes, SUNY Purchase, and the Bard Conservatory of Music.