Aaron Westman

violin

Aaron Westman has performed as a soloist, principal player, or chamber musician with Agave Baroque, American Bach Soloists, Berkeley West Edge Opera, Bach Collegium San Diego, El Mundo, Ensemble Mirable, Live Oak Baroque Orchestra, Long Beach Opera, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Magnificat, Musica Angelica, Musica Pacifica, New Hampshire Music Festival, Pacific Bach Project, Seraphic Fire, and The Vivaldi Project, and he also performs regularly with Orchester Wiener Akademie and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.

Recently called a “brilliant violinist” and noted for his “profound playing” (Early Music America, Fall 2014), Aaron co-directs the award winning chamber ensembles Agave Baroque and the Live Oak Baroque Orchestra. Agave is 2014-15 Ensemble in Residence for Presidio Sessions, and was a finalist in the Early Music America Baroque Performance Competition in 2012 and the EMA/NAXOS Recording Competition, and was a featured main stage performer at the 2012 Berkeley Early Music Festival. Both ensembles have received recent recording grants from the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. He has recorded for Hollywood, and on the Dorian/Sono Luminus, VGo Recordings, NCA, and Philharmonia Baroque Productions labels, as well as live on KPFK (Los Angeles), WDAV (North Carolina), BBC, ORF (Austria), and as a soloist on NPR’s Harmonia and Performance Today radio programs. Westman tours extensively worldwide, including with two projects starring the actor John Malkovich. Recent tours have taken him to Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and all over the United States.

He holds a Master of Music from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with a double-major in viola performance and early music. His teachers included Stanley Ritchie, Alan de Veritch, Geraldine Walther, and Theodore Arm. He has recently taught master classes at University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Appalachian State University, and for three years taught at California Institute of the Arts, near Los Angeles.