Violinist Kaleigh Acord completed a Doctorate of Musical Arts at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music in December 2020. At UW, she was a student of Soh-Hyun Park Altino and a recipient of the Paul Collins Fellowship. Kaleigh holds a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, as well as a Masters of Music and an Undergraduate Diploma from the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA. She was a recipient of Peabody’s Valerie Slingluff Violin Scholarship for the 2016-17 year. Her previous teachers include Violaine Melancon and Laura Bossert. In March 2014, she made her radio debut on WQXR’s McGraw Hill Financial Young Artist Showcase playing Schoenfield’s Souvenirs for Violin and Piano. Notable chamber music collaborations include those with the Hausmann Quartet, cellist Michael Kannen, and Tchaikovsky International Gold Medalist Sergey Antonov. Her debut album of unaccompanied violin works, Twenty-First Century American Storytellers, is now available to stream through Spotify.
As a teacher, Kaleigh aims to help her students cultivate trust in their own ability to tackle challenges, musical and otherwise. She has taught violin and viola privately for over a decade. In addition, she has coached small ensembles for Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras, led violin sectionals for UW’s Symphony Orchestra from 2017-19, acted as teaching assistant for Laura Bossert’s violin and viola studios at Longy School of Music from 2012-15, mentored through El-Sistema-inspired string projects in the Boston area during 2013-15, and served on the Young Artist Faculty at Lyricafest Chamber Music Festival in Lincoln, MA from 2013-15.