Amy Hess

Amy Hess is a member of the viola sections of the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Grant Park Orchestra and is on the faculty of the Fulton Summer Music Academy. She was formerly principal viola of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and a member of the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra, and she has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, and Music of the Baroque. Amy has been heard on the Dame Myra Hess and Rush Hour concert series in Chicago and regularly performs as a member of the Fulton Chamber Players and the Chicago Ensemble. She has recently been a soloist with Sinfonietta DuPage and collaborated in concert with bassist Edgar Meyer as part of the Aspen Salida concert series in Colorado. She also was part of the Chicago premiere of Joel Puckett’s string quartet concerto Short Stories with the Northwestern Symphonic Wind Ensemble and performed the solo viola role in Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote with cellist Joseph Johnson and the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra.

Amy received her Master of Music in viola from Northwestern University and is a Phi Beta Kappa alumna of Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, where she earned degrees in French and violin. While at Oberlin, she spent a semester in Paris, studying violin with David Rivière of the CNSM and musicology at the Sorbonne. Her interest in French music continued with a collaboration with Ravel scholar Sigrun Heinzelmann on a presentation at the Music Theory Midwest conference and several lectures at Oberlin. Amy’s principal teachers and mentors have included Karen Ritscher, Roland Vamos, David Bowlin, and Addison Teng, but it all began thanks to her mother, a Suzuki violin teacher in Lancaster, PA.

“I love performing as a member of the Lyric Opera Orchestra because of how this world-class ensemble is able to bring the stories and emotions onstage to life through music!”