VIOLIST LESLIE BLACKBURN HARLOW
Festival Artist in Residence, Violist Leslie Harlow, is the Founder and Co-Director of the Park City Beethoven Festival. She has performed in chamber concerts with a host of the finest artists of this era. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Leslie Harlow performed in master classes for William Primrose, Paul Doktor, Donald McGinnis, Heidi Castleman and Nabuko Imai and her primary teachers were Marna Street, Susan Schoenfeld, Paul Doktor, and violinist Harry Shub with additional lessons with Heidi Castleman, Donald Wright and Francis Tursi. Ms. Harlow studied chamber music with coaches including Felix Galimer, Samuel Rhodes, David Soyer, Paul Doktor, Charles Castleman, Robert Sylvester and Julius Baker.
Following graduation from Juilliard, Ms Harlow moved to Utah with the plan to found a chamber music festival modeled after festivals she had been performing with over the years. She founded the Deer Valley (Utah) Chamber Music Festival in 1984 which has since been renamed the Beethoven Festival. The Festival continues to this day as Utah's oldest classical music festival, as of 2019, presenting over 750 festival chamber concerts featuring many of the finest classical soloists of this era.
An active recording artist, both in chamber music and in commercial studio work, Ms. Harlow's viola solos have been featured on a number of film and television soundtracks including "Murder in the First”, "Surviving Picasso” and, most recently “Alpha”. She also founded and for many years directed the Park City Film Music Festival, the first U.S. film festival dedicated to the impact of music in film.
Active in teaching, Leslie Harlow is the coordinator and coach for the chamber music program Utah Valley University Department of Music in Orem, Utah. In 2015 Ms. Harlow was invited to present the collegiate level viola master class at the National ASTA Convention and to as judge for the collegiate solo competition.
Representing the Festival, Leslie and clarinetist Russell Harlow perform concerts together with their colleagues throughout the year. They particularly enjoy performing for senior residents in retirement homes and for aspiring young artists at their schools.
Outside of the Festival, Harlows are busy professional performing artists, invited to perform in Utah and beyond, including for the Bargemusic Series in New York. Leslie Harlow’s recording credits also include the critically-acclaimed SACD recording for the ISOMIKE label: Chamber Music for Clarinets and Strings which features works by Karel Husa, Bohuslav Martinu and Ingolf Dahl.