MARIA LAMBROS

Named one of “Montana’s Leading Artists and Entertainers of the 20th Century,” violist Maria Lambros has performed as a chamber musician throughout the world as a member of the chamber ensemble, La Fenice and the Cooperstown, Mendelssohn, Ridge and Meliora string quartets. With her quartets, she performed in venues such as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Wigmore Hall in London, the Library of Congress and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.  She has performed and taught at many major festivals, including the Spoleto festivals of USA, Italy and Australia, Tanglewood, Santa Fe, Four Seasons, La Jolla, Chesapeake, Caramoor, Aspen, Norfolk, and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival.  She has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, DaCamera Society of Houston and with the Guarneri, Cleveland, Juilliard, Muir, Brentano, Borromeo, Colorado and Orion Quartets and the Peabody Trio, among others. Other notable collaborators include Leon Fleisher, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, Walter Trampler, Paula Robison and Jan De Gaetani. A winner of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, Europe’s Diapason d’Or and a Grammy nomination with her quartets, she has recorded for RCA and Telarc and a recording of the Brahms Viola Quintets with the New Zealand Quartet was released on the Naxos label in 2019. 

A champion of new music, Ms. Lambros has had many pieces written especially for her, including four viola sonatas, a viola concerto and numerous chamber works for viola with other instruments. She is also involved in historical performance and recorded Schumann’s Piano Quartet and Quintet on period instruments with the violinist Sergiu Luca. Mr. Luca, as well as flutist Paula Robison, pianist Leon Fleisher, violinist Donald Weilerstein and harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper are among those she considers her most significant influences.

A devoted teacher, Ms. Lambros is on the faculties of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and the Yellow Barn Music School. She graduated from the Eastman School of Music and also earned a degree in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University. After hearing the Bach Double Violin Concerto in a hospital lobby, she started Our Joyful Noise Baltimore, a non-profit organization that brings an ongoing and accessible concert series to a prison, shelter for veterans, cancer treatment residence, hospitals treating COVID patients and for families living with autism: ourjoyfulnoisebaltimore.org.  An avid Baltimore Orioles and Ravens fan, she lives in Baltimore with her husband, cellist Michael Kannen.