Melissa Matson is a versatile chamber musician and the former principal violist of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Her solo appearances with the RPO include Berlioz's Harold in Italy (with conductor Andreas Delfs) and two performances of Mozart's Sinfonie Concertante (with violinists Juliana Athayde and David Brickman). Ms. Matson premiered the “Sonata for Viola and Piano,” written for her by Verne Reynolds (1999), and performed the west coast premiere of the Rebecca Clarke “Sonata for Viola and Orchestra.”
Melissa performed throughout the U.S. as a founding member of the Chester String Quartet, top prize winners at the Munich and Portsmouth (England) international competitions during her five-year tenure. Following a faculty quartet position with the Chester at Indiana University at South Bend, Ms. Matson joined the RPO in 1983, serving as principal violist 1999-2019.
Originally from Chico, California, she received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Martha Katz and was awarded the coveted Performer's Certificate. Additional studies were with Heidi Castleman, Karen Tuttle, and the Cleveland and Juilliard Quartets. For three decades she taught orchestral excerpts as Associate Professor of Orchestral Repertory (viola) at Eastman. She has just released Exploring Excerpts: A Violist's Guide to Developing Skills for Orchestral Playing which joins her popular One-Position Finger Pattern Scales, an infinitely-variable approach to left-hand versatility.
She is founding Artistic Director of First Muse Chamber Music (an annual series of concerts at First Unitarian Church in Rochester NY (2007-2018)), and is a frequent performer with the Skaneateles Festival (NY). She is a founding member of the Amenda Quartet, whose acclaimed "Project Ludwig" (2015-16) performed the complete string quartets of Beethoven in the Rochester area. She also finds time to pursue the visual arts, and in the past six years has built homes with the Habitat for Humanity "Women Build" program in Rochester.
