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Alexandra Switala
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Alexandra Alvarado Switala is a scholarship recipient of the Music Institute of Chicago’s Academy program for gifted pre-college musicians where she studies privately with MIC artist faculty members Roland and Almita Vamos. She began her musical journey at the age of four in Texas, where she studied with Jan Mark Sloman, and has since studied privately with renowned musicians from across the nation, including Catherine Cho at the Juilliard School.
Alexandra is the Junior Division First Prize winner of the 2011 Sphinx Competition, First Prize winner of the Ars Viva concerto competition, and is also the third place winner in the 2011 Blount-Slawson Young Artists competition. Alexandra is also the recipient of the Bayard H. Friedman award for Outstanding Student in the Performing Arts in Fort Worth and recipient of the Texas Commission on the Arts Young Master Award.
Since the age of 13, Alexandra has had many notable performance opportunities, including as a soloist with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, the SMU Meadows symphony orchestra, and performing chamber music at the Embassy of the United States of America in Canada. This May she will also perform as a soloist with the Ars Viva Symphony Orchestra alongside Maestro Alan Heatherington. She has been a featured on NPR shows such as From the Top and Performance Today, as well as on the nationally syndicated PBS television show From the Top at Carnegie Hall in a duet with her brother, Robert.
Alexandra has participated in and received full scholarships to numerous summer festivals, where she’s participated as both a chamber musician and as a soloist. These festivals include the Perlman Music Program in Shelter Island, New York, ENCORE school for strings, Aspen Music Festival, and the National Arts Centre Young Artists’ Program in Ottawa, Canada. At these festivals, she has worked in-depth with musicians such as David Cerone, Itzhak Perlman, Giora Schmidt, Masao Kawasaki, Patinka Kopec, Grigory Kalinovsky, and Pinchas Zuckerman. She has also had the privilege of playing for such eminent artists as Ida Kavafian, Ani Kavafian, Elmar Oliveira, Midori, Stephanie Chase, Patinka Kopec, James Ehnes, Jacques Israelievitch, Pamela Frank, Rachel Barton Pine, and Joel Smirnoff in master classes.
As a passionate chamber musician, she is strongly influenced by Merry Peckham and the Cavani quartet, as well as other illustrious musicians such as Nicholas Mann and Pinchas Zukerman. With her string trio, VistaNova, she has participated in the Fischoff National chamber music competition and has been coached by members of the Audubon, Guarneri, and Mendelssohn quartets, and has collaborated with eminent artists such as Christopher O’Reilly. In her free time, Alexandra enjoys playing tennis, exploring modern art museums, instant photography, watching operas, and listening to all genres of non-classical music, including Indie and Korean pop and her cultural Mariachi and Cumbia music.
She was the Junior Division First Place Laureate of the 14th Annual Sphinx Competition 2011 presented by The DTE Energy Foundation.
This is Alexandra’s first appearance with the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra.