Clarissa Bevilacqua

Biography

Violinist Clarissa Bevilacqua is known to enchant audiences with her dazzling technical skills and deeply inspiring musicality. Music director and conductor Terry Lowry says she has that “rare star quality that is difficult to describe, but impossible to miss.”

​Clarissa debuted at the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago in front of ten thousand people when she was nine years old. Since then, she has performed solo recitals and concerto engagements at venues throughout North America and Europe. Recent and upcoming soloist performances include the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Cape Symphony, Orchestra della Toscana, Orchestra Filarmonica di Benevento, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, Orchestra UniMi, El Sistema Orchestra, and the Salzburger Orchester Solisten.

​Winner of several international competitions, she was awarded First Prize, Audience Award and Special Bärenreiter Award at the International Mozart Competition Salzburg. She was also awarded the Grand Prize at the Cape Symphony International Violin Competition. She is a Young Artist of the Classically Connected Organization in New York, and an Affiliate Artist of the Guarneri Hall Program in Chicago.

An avid and enthusiastic learner, Clarissa received her Bachelor of Music at age sixteen, graduating summa cum laude. In 2021, she completed her Master of Music in Violin Performance at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, where she studied with Pierre Amoyal. She is currently studying with Antje Weithaas at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin.

Clarissa is passionate about historic violins, and at age fourteen, she was selected as the youngest violinist to perform regularly with the precious Stradivari collection of the Violin Museum in Cremona. She now performs on a violin by Zosimo Bergonzi, Cremona c.1748, courtesy of Guarneri Hall NFP and Darnton & Hersh Fine Violins, Chicago.

Clarissa’s debut album will be released this Autumn by Nimbus Records, featuring Augusta Read Thomas complete works for solo violin, and Violin Concerto #3: "Juggler in Paradise" with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni.