About Kaleigh
Violinist and violist Kaleigh Acord completed a Doctor of Musical Arts at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music in December 2020, and her debut album of six unaccompanied violin works, Twenty-First Century American Storytellers, is available to stream through Spotify. Active as a chamber musician, Kaleigh has made guest appearances with several Madison-based series including Grace Presents, Willy Street Chamber Players, Oakwood Chamber Players, Chamber Music @ Art + Lit Lab, and the LunArt Festival. She spent summer 2023 as a fully-funded fellow at Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Colchester, VT, performing alongside both faculty and peers. At UW-Madison, she was a student of Soh-Hyun Park Altino and a recipient of the esteemed Paul Collins Fellowship. She also holds a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, as well as a Masters of Music and an Undergraduate Diploma from the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA. Her previous teachers include Violaine Melancon and Laura Bossert. Kaleigh received Peabody’s 2016-17 Valerie Slingluff Violin Scholarship and debuted on WQXR’s McGraw Hill Financial Young Artist Showcase in March 2014, playing Schoenfeld's Souvenirs for Violin and Piano. Notable chamber music collaborations include those with the Hausmann Quartet, cellist Michael Kannen, and Tchaikovsky International Gold Medalist Sergey Antonov.
Kaleigh has taught violin and viola privately for over a decade, and since 2021 is a faculty member at Madison Conservatory and Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras' Music Makers. Both programs seek to address financial and social barriers that inhibit access to youth music education. Kaleigh coached chamber music for WYSO during 2021, led violin sectionals for UW’s Symphony Orchestra from 2017-19, acted as teaching assistant for Laura Bossert's violin and viola studios at Longy School of Music from 2012-15, mentored through El-Sistema-inspired string projects in the Boston area during 2013-15, and served on the Young Artist Faculty at Lyricafest Chamber Music Festival in Lincoln, MA from 2013-15.