Anya Wilkening, violinist, has performed in multiple venues including the Aspen Music Festival and Schoool, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, and at Carnegie Hall with the Shepherd School of Music.  An avid chamber musician, Ms. Wilkening recently participated in the prestigious Robert Mann String Quartet Seminar, appeared as a Young Artist in Residence at the Strings Music Festival, and is thrilled to join the Da Camera Young Artist Program for the 2017-2018 season. She currently studies with Paul Kantor, pursuing her Master of Music at the Shepherd School, where she is the recipient of the Joe Anne Berwick ’44 Endowed Scholarship in Music. Ms. Wilkening performs on a 1761 Florentine violin made by Lorenzo and Tomaso Carcassi. Her passion for music as a means of communication informs not only her performance, but also her teaching and programming.

Ms. Wilkening has developed outreach programs for the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado and the Strings Music Festival, and has taught at the Rivers School and Campbell Music School. Recently, the Massachusetts Cultural Council awarded Ms. Wilkening a grant to organize concerts and outreach on the Outer Cape and Nantucket.

As a musicologist, Anya Wilkening is interested in how music helps us contextualize eras and cultures. Research interests include medieval vernacular and pious song, religious drama, and gender in music. In 2015, she was awarded the First Prize for Undergraduate students in the Fondren Library Research Awards in recognition of her research on the Magdalenian identity in fifteenth century German Passion plays. Recently, she presented her thesis exploring the contrafacta of Gautier de Coinci at the Conference in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Rice University. As the Arts & Culture assistant at Houston Public Media, she writes and produces a weekly show, Music in the Making, web articles, and interviews focusing on the local arts scene.