Katie Schlaikjer

Cello

(860) 486-4749
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Cellist Katie Schlaikjer joined the award-winning Colorado Quartet in July of 2009. She is an accomplished chamber musician having performed throughout the United States, Canada, England, Australia and Israel. In demand as a teacher and chamber music coach, she is a regular guest at the Apple Hill center for chamber music and joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut in the fall of 2010.

A Boston native, Katie attended the Walnut Hill School for the performing arts and the New England Conservatory (BM earned with distinction in performance) where her teachers included Laurence Lesser, Andres Diaz, Peter Stumpf and Eugene Lehner. Katie spent three months as a resident artist at the Banff Centre for the Arts where she performed and studied with David Takeno, Scott St John, John Perry and Edgar Meyer. She completed both her Master's and Doctoral degrees at Stony Brook University where her teachers included Timothy Eddy, Julius Levine and Gilbert Kalish.

During her three-year membership with the Avalon String Quartet she was awarded top prizes from the Concert Artist Guild, the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, and the Banff International String Quartet Competition, participated in residencies at Ravinia's Steans Institute, Aspen's Center for Advanced Quartet Studies and studied under the Vermeer and Emerson String Quartets at the Northern Illinois University and Hartt schools respectively. Also with the Avalon Quartet, Katie participated in seminars runs by Issac Stern both in New York at Carnegie Hall and in Jerusalem. Following their final performance at the Stern workshop in Carnegie Hall the quartet was described by the New York Times as "altogether a superb team".

Ms Schlaikjer has performed at the Ravinia, Tanglewood, Aspen, Icicle Creek and Caramoor festivals, collaborated with artists including Renée Fleming, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, and Peter Wiley and recorded for the Albany and Naïve Classique labels. Katie is an active participant in NYC's music scene, and has appeared with SONYC (the string orchestra of NYC), Manhattan Sinfonietta, Azure Ensemble, and the new music ensembles Argento and Newband. An advocate of new music, she has worked with many composers including Gunther Schuller, Chen Yi, Laura Kaminsky and Lee Hyla. Over the past year, Ms Schlaikjer's appearances with the Colorado Quartet have included a world-wide live broadcast performance from Symphony Space's 2010 Wall to Wall marathon concert and performances in San Francisco, Ohio, Virginia, Delaware and the British Virgin Islands. Upcoming projects with the quartet include two performances of the complete Bartok quartets at the University of Connecticut and at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

A dedicated teacher, Katie maintained a private teaching studio in Stony Brook, NY for seven years and has taught cello at Bard Conservatory's Preparatory music program, coached chamber music at New England Conservatory's Extension Division, Stony Brook's pre-college program, Charlie Castleman's Quartet Program (NY) and the Icicle Creek (WA), Mimir (TX) and Apple Hill (NH) chamber music festivals and given master classes at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Delaware. She plays on a cello made by Paolo Castello in Genoa in 1775 and her bow is a Nicholas Maire.