Department of Music

Violinist Daniel Sender is gaining an international reputation as a performer, educator, and scholar.    Recent concert tours in Europe have been met with high praise and Dr. Sender is increasingly in demand in both the classroom and the concert stage.  A frequent guest soloist and principal artist with chamber and symphony orchestras throughout the region, Dr. Sender currently serves as concertmaster of the Charlottesville Symphony, Charlottesville Opera, and the Virginia Consort.  Since 2017 he has also been a festival artist with the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra.

Dr. Sender was selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for the 2020-21 Academic Year and will be teaching at the prestigious Liszt Academy (Budapest) and the University of Pécs during the Spring 2021 semester. Dr. Sender was also previously awarded a Fulbright Student Scholar grant for his research in Budapest (2010-11), and attended the Liszt Academy as a student of Vilmos Szabadi.  He was formerly the first violinist of the Adelphi String Quartet, which held a fellowship residency at the University of Maryland, and was for four years the violinist of the Annapolis Chamber Players.  Dr. Sender has recorded for Centaur, Sono Luminus, Bifrost and other independent labels.

Dr. Sender’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of folk music and art music in Hungary.  With written and composed works, including the article, “Bartók’s Rhapsodies: A Violinist’s Guide to Building an Authentic Interpretation” (American String Teacher), Dr. Sender has been making progress in bridging the gap between scholarship and performance relating to the music of central Europe. Recent research has resulted a new composition for violin and piano, “Roma Folk Dances: Village Tunes of the Hungarian Roma” (2019), and additional new works are currently in progress. 

As a chamber musician, Dr. Sender has had the pleasure of performing with members of the Audubon Quartet, Axelrod and Left Bank quartets and spent two years working intensively under the mentorship of the Guarneri Quartet. Solo and chamber concerts have taken him to venues around the world including the Kennedy Center, National School of the Arts “Panayot Pipkov” (Bulgaria), Institute of Music at the University of Pécs (Hungary), Hungarian Embassy, Bartók Hall of the Erdödy Palace (Budapest), Smithsonian Museum of American History, Universität der Kunste (Berlin) and the Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal).

A native of Philadelphia, Dr. Sender attended Ithaca College, the University of Maryland, the Liszt Academy (Budapest) and the Institute for European Studies (Vienna).  His primary teachers include Vilmos Szabadi, Arnold Steinhardt, David Salness, René Staar, and Gerald Fischbach. He is on the performance faculty of the University of Virginia’s McIntire Department of Music and also holds a faculty position at Interlochen’s Adult Chamber Music Camp.