MIC Alumna Isabella Brown Joins LA Philharmonic
November 7th, 2024
At just 21, Academy alumna Isabella Brown has reached a remarkable milestone in her career, joining the LA Philharmonic as Assistant Principal Violinist under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel.
Academy violinist Isabella Brown joined the Academy in September 2015. Izzy, as we warmly know her, moved with her family from the East Coast to Chicago, with her brothers Nicholas and Joshua, who are also violinists—to study with esteemed violin faculty members Almita and Roland Vamos and join the Academy, MIC’s pre-college conservatory program
For six years, Izzy played a vital role in the program, evolving into a confident, eloquent, and expressive performer. She graduated in May 2021 and matriculated to the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles to study with violin and chamber music faculty member Martin Beaver.
In May, while still a student at Colburn, Izzy auditioned for the position of Assistant Principal at just 21 years old (and her first orchestral audition). Remarkably, she was offered the job at this young age. She assumed the position earlier this month and, under the leadership of Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, will work alongside some of the finest musicians in the world.
While at the Academy, Izzy won first prize at the 2020 Crain-Mailing CSO Young Artists Competition which as a result made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2022. Isabella was awarded a top prize in the Cooper International Violin Competition and had the privilege of debuting with the Cleveland Orchestra at the age of sixteen. In 2020, Isabella won First Prize in the Professional Division at the Chicago International Music Competition, standing out among over 400 musicians from 22 countries. Before this achievement, she had secured First Place in multiple prestigious competitions, including the Alexander and Buono International String Competition, the Asian American International Music Competition, the Rockville Competition for Piano and Strings, the Confucius Music Festival Competition hosted by the Chinese Fine Arts Society, the Sejong Music Competition, the Open Junior String Division of MYA’s Walgreens National Concerto Competition, and the DePaul Concerto Festival for Young Performers. She was also named a National YoungArts Foundation Winner in 2019 and went on to win the Lakeview Orchestra Competition, the DuPage Symphony Orchestra Competition, and the Kishwaukee Symphony Montzka Young Artist Competition that same year. Additionally, she received the NFMC Oscar Valentin Violin Award in 2022.
Isabella's solo debut with an orchestra came at age ten with the Capital Symphonic Youth Orchestra at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. Since then, she has performed with notable orchestras, including the Oistrakh Symphony Orchestra, Waukegan Symphony Orchestra, New North Shore Symphony Orchestra, Northbrook Symphony Orchestra, Lakeview Orchestra, DuPage Symphony Orchestra, Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra, Kishwaukee Symphony, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Cleveland Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She has also been featured on WFMT in Chicago and WCLV in Cleveland, appeared in the Dame Myra Hess series in Chicago and the Alden Theater Young Soloist Series in Virginia, and performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Chicago Cultural Center, Cleveland's Severance Hall, Chicago’s Harris Theater, Ravinia's Bennett Gordon Hall, and Chicago's Symphony Center.
Congratulations to Isabella on this exciting new chapter!