Emily Hale, violin
(photo credit Jamison Wexler Photography)
Audiences have described violinist Emily Hale’s performances as animated, intuitive and elegant. Fueled by a sense of curiosity and discovery, Emily performs baroque and classical repertoire on period instruments and creates interactive performance experiences.
Her credits include recording with the London-based Early Opera Company for a BBC Channel 4 series about life in the 18th century. She’s played chamber music and opera repertoire at the Valletta International Baroque Music Festival in Malta and at the London Handel Festival. In New York, she has appeared with the Four Nations Ensemble and The Sebastians, and in Boston with Emmanuel Music.
From intimate house concerts to leading a pop-up baroque orchestra at Boston’s Roslindale neighborhood Porchfest, Emily is focused on connecting with audiences. Her Pajama Concerts have proved popular with family audiences at libraries and schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania. Pajama Concerts offer innovative “musical story-telling,” pairing classic children’s literature with chamber music in an open, inclusive format.
As founder and curator of the period ensemble The Halfmoon, Emily programs multi-disciplinary concert experiences that connect early music and culture with our lives today. Her latest project, PrintWorks, began its life as a mixed-media virtual concert featuring 17th century music, instruments and printing processes, newly commissioned musical works, and animations inspired by them. In 2022 the project will begin touring as a live performance, featured in conjunction with an in-person printmaking workshop. PrintWorks is a collaboration of artists across three continents, and explores how the tools we use shape us, and the things we create.
Committed to nurturing other musicians’ curiosity and growth, Emily is Instructor of Violin and Viola at Bridgewater State University, and has coached baroque ensembles in the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music and is on faculty at the Early Music Week summer festival in Conway, NH.
Emily holds a master’s degree in Historical Performance, with Distinction, from the Royal College of Music in London. At the RCM, she studied with Adrian Butterfield and Catherine Martin, and won the McKenna Prize for Baroque Music. Her work was featured as part of the College’s series of innovative student-curated concerts, Great Exhitibitionists. Emily also received degrees in violin performance from Houghton College and Penn State University.