Risa Browder

Risa Browder (Violin and Viola), whose playing The Washington Post has called “flavorful and expressive”, grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. Asked at age three if she would like to learn the violin, she answered her parents with an emphatic, “Yes!” She’s been playing ever since, nowadays focusing on historically informed performance on violin, viola, viola d’amore, and occasionally treble and tenor viols. She trained at Oberlin Conservatory, the Royal College of Music (London, UK), and the Schola Cantorum (Basel, Switzerland), studying with some of the great pioneers of the HP movement: Marilyn McDonald, Catherine Mackintosh, and Jaap Schroeder. Having completed her studies, she began her musical career in Europe playing and recording with groups like the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Concert, and Les Musiciens du Louvre, among others. Now living in the Washington, DC area, she co-directs Modern Musick, in residence at Georgetown University, with whom she has performed a wide range of repertoire from the early Baroque to the Classical, including music of Corelli, Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. She appears regularly as soloist and concertmaster with the Folger Consort, as principal viola with the Washington Bach Consort, with the National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, and as a guest artist with REBEL. At the Peabody Conservatory Risa teaches baroque violin and viola, and with her husband cellist John Moran co-directs the Baltimore Baroque Band, Peabody’s acclaimed baroque orchestra. Their work with this group garnered them Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award in 2018. Many of her Peabody students have gone on to become respected performers in the world of Early Music, both in this country and abroad. In addition to her busy performing schedule and conservatory teaching, Risa directs the middle and high school orchestras at the H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program in Arlington, Virginia.