St. Cecilia Performers

Isabel Trautwein

Isabel has been a member of the first violin section in the Cleveland Orchestra since September 2002, and has shared this violin virtuosity with listeners throughout the world. While spending her student years in Germany, she toured extensively throughout Europe, Africa, and India with Claudio Abbado’s European Youth Orchestra. She performed chamber music at the Salzburger Festspiele, the Schleswig Holstein Festival, the Taos School of Music, the Grand Teton Festival, and as a member of the Artemis Quartet Berlin at the Aspen Festival quartet program. Upon receiving her degrees from the Musikhochschule Luebeck, where she studied with Christian Tetzlaff and with members of the Lasalle Quartet, Isabel was awarded German government grants to pursue her studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music under Donald Weilerstein. Isabel continued her traveling ways in the United States. She was concertmaster of the New World Symphony in Miami, a member of the Houston Symphony, and of the Naumburg Award-winning Pacifica String Quartet. Isabel has appeared as soloist with the orchestras of the Musikhochschule Luebeck, the Cleveland Institute of Music and with the St. Louis Symphony. She performs chamber music annually at the MIMIR Festival in Texas with members of the Chicago Symphony and at the Innsbrook Institute in Missouri with the members of the St. Louis Symphony. As a member of the St. Louis Symphony, where she served as principle second violin and section first violin, she held the title of Resident Musician—a unique experimental role that combined orchestral playing with extensive outreach activity in diverse community settings. Isabel has served as concertmaster of the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado. Along with her love for her work with the Cleveland Orchestra, Isabel is passionate both about teaching children and playing chamber music. This season she started a series of chamber concerts in Cleveland Heights called Heights Art House Concerts that seeks to perform chamber music in casual settings for a wide range of audiences. She has also started a chamber orchestra called TACO: The Awesome Children’s Orchestra, where half of the performers are professional musicians and half are children ages 6-12. Isabel currently resides in Cleveland Heights, Ohio with her dog, Yoffi, who—interestingly, with an owner so musical—is deaf.

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