Martine Kinsella Thomas
OSGF
Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II
Martine Thomas (pronouns: she/her) is a violist, performing internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, improviser, and composer collaborator. She has appeared at the Berliner Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Mariinsky Theatre, Disney Hall, the KKL Lucerne, the Beijing National Centre for the Performing Arts, and at the BBC Proms, Mariinsky White Nights Festival, Donaueschingen Festival, and Lucerne Festival. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Tyshawn Sorey, Kim Kashkashian, and Ghost Ensemble. Martine loves presenting solo recitals, and is looking forward to recitals this year in New York City, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and upstate New York. She is also passionate about recitals and concerts in community-oriented settings, including as a Music for Food artist fellow, through Meristem Artists, at the Biophony Festival, and in Celebrity Series Concert for One. Martine has a special interest in contemporary music and working with composers, which has led to recent collaborations and premieres with Tyshawn Sorey, Rebecca Saunders, George Lewis, Catherine Lamb, Miya Masaoka, and Joy Guidry as well as extensive workshops and performances at the Banff Centre and Lucerne Festival.
Martine received her Bachelor of Arts from Harvard and her Master of Music from New England Conservatory, where she studied in the Harvard-NEC Dual Degree program. Her mentors include Paul Neubauer, Martha Katz, Mark Steinberg, Paul Biss, and Vijay Iyer. She is currently working on a doctorate in viola performance at CUNY Graduate Center and is on the string faculty at Brooklyn College Conservatory and Point CounterPoint.
Martine is a poetry editor for Peripheries Journal and a recipient of the Joan Gray Untermeyer Poetry Prize and the Le Baron Russell Briggs Travelling Prize. Jorie Graham advised Martine’s senior thesis, a collection of original poems. Her poems have been recently featured in Lana Turner Journal and the Colorado Review.