Without music, is there meaning? Violist Danielle Wiebe Burke will explore this question on Thursday, April 10, 2025 at 8pm in Old Cabell Hall. This event is free to attend and open to the public.
There is an ancient connection between the rhythms of the meaningful voice and the act of music making itself, as if something musical adheres in language and assigns it life. This concert explores compositions that bear the sonic imprint of our voices and asks how our experience of music is shaped by our lives as speakers and story makers. Through works by Caroline Shaw, Garth Knox, Derrick Skye, Ludwig van Beethoven, Benjamin Britten, Heinrich Biber, and UVA’s own Judith Shatin, Danielle Wiebe Burke charts lines across time from saying to sounding, from the domestic drama of a marital feud to mantric practice and beyond.
An artist whose playing has been hailed as “highly idiomatic, richly varied,” Mexican-Canadianviolist Danielle Wiebe Burke’s work as a performer and educator has been recognized since she made her debut with the Calgary Civic Symphony at the age of sixteen.
She was a prizewinning finalist at the 15th Annual Sphinx Competition and, recently, a quarter-finalist in the Primrose International Viola Competition. Her recordings have garnered international attention, with Gramophone’s review of her premiere of Hannah Lash’s “Requiem” (Naxos) describing her playing as emerging “as beautifully as the singers sing.”
As a soloist, Danielle has performed in halls throughout Europe and the United States, including Zipper Hall (Colburn), Warner Music Hall (Oberlin), Woolsey Hall (Yale), and Severance Hall in Detroit. She may be heard regularly in the Belvedere Series, Staunton Music Festival, Appalachian Chamber Music Festival, and Wintergreen Music Festival. An accomplished orchestral musician, she has appeared in Boston’s Phoenix Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony, and the Williamsburg Symphony, where she holds the John C. Jamison Principal Viola Chair.
An avid explorer of new musical forms and of the interstates that link the classical tradition to popular idioms, Danielle has premiered the work of contemporary composers such as Michael Gilbertson, Ethan Braun, and Polina Nazaykinskaya. In other contexts, she has performed on NPR’s Tiny Desk with Faye Webster and on World Café with regular collaborators, the minimalist folk duo Lowland Hum.
A student of Kim Kashkashian at the New England Conservatory and Ettore Causa at Yale University, where she received her doctorate, Danielle enjoys bringing music to young artists. She has performed Bach in the botanical gardens at Cornell, toured the “lost” composer Gaspar Cassadó’s string quartets to Oberlin, Ohio State, and Yale, and, with theorist Craig Wright, assembled an introduction to music that is now available to students across the world through Yale Open Courses. She presently teaches violin and viola at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Danielle plays a 2009 Stefan Greiner viola commissioned by violinist Kyung Wha Chung. She lives on a historic farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
This concert is free and open to the public.
Program: subject to change
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1604-1744), Transcribed by Danielle Wiebe Burke
Mystery Sonata IX: The Carrying of the Cross
Sam Suggs, Bass
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Transcribed by Danielle Wiebe Burke
An die Ferne Geliebte, Op. 98
Poetry by Alois Jeitelles (1794-1858)
Shelby Sender, Piano
John Dowland (1563-1626), Transcribed by Danielle Wiebe Burke
Flow My Tears and If My Complaints Could Passions Move
Shelby Sender, Piano
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Lachrymae: Reflections on a song by John Dowland, op. 48a
Shelby Sender, Piano
Judith Shatin (1949 - )
Penelope’s Song (2003)
For amplified viola and electronics
Derrick Skye (1982 - )
Hum (2020)
For solo viola
Caroline Shaw (1982 - )
in manus tuas (2009)
For solo viola
Garth Knox (1956 - )
Three Weddings and a Fight
For solo viola
This event is supported by the Eleanor Shea Music Trust.
Old Cabell Hall is located on the south end of UVA's historic lawn, directly opposite the Rotunda (map). At UVA, parking is available in the C1 lot off McCormick Rd, and the Central Grounds Parking Garage on Emmet St. is walking-distance to the hall. Handicap parking is available in the small parking lot adjacent to Bryan Hall.
All events are subject to change.
For more information on this event, please contact the UVA Department of Music at 434.924.3052 or email music@virginia.edu.