Michi Wiancko is a violinist and composer whose creative work encompasses a wide spectrum of new composition, collaboration, and interpretation.
Her current and upcoming commissions include a new opera called Arkana Aquarium produced by Experiments in Opera, new works for Boston Chamber Music Society, NOW Ensemble, Jupiter String Quartet, Cavani String Quartet, Anne Akiko Meyers, Jason Vieaux, Andrew Yee, Alexi Kenney, and Mark Fewer. Highlights from past commissioning projects include works for the The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Camerata Bern with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Anna Prohaska, Liquid Music, Aizuri Quartet, Enso Quartet, Sybarite5, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Metropolis Ensemble and Ecstatic Music Festival. She also composes music for short and feature-length films, commercials, and for her own band, Kono Michi.
After receiving the 2018 Opera America Commissioning Grant for Female Composers, Wiancko’s first opera, Murasaki’s Moon, was premiered to critical acclaim (and to more than 15,000 livestream views) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in May 2019. This work was created in collaboration with librettist Deborah Brevoort and director Eric Einhorn, and co-commissioned by Met Live Arts, OnSite Opera, and American Lyric Theater.
A passionate interpreter of contemporary music, Wiancko has been fortunate enough to work closely with a wide array of her favorite living composers including Gabriela Lena Frank, Missy Mazzoli, Vijay Iyer, Judd Greenstein, David T. Little, PaviElle French, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, William Brittelle, Paula Matthusen, Mark Dancigers, Jessie Montgomery, and Christopher Adler. She has also arranged for and performed with countless non-classical artists, most notably Emily Wells, Jen Wasner and Wye Oak, PaviElle French, and El Vy with Matt Berninger from The National. Michi has toured with International Contemporary Ensemble, The Knights, A Far Cry, Alarm Will Sound, Mark Morris Dance Group, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Musicians from Marlboro, and many others.
Wiancko gave her violin solo debuts with the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and performed her recital debut in Weill Hall. In September of 2020, she released an album of newly-commissioned works for electro-acoustic solo violin on New Amsterdam Records. Michi recorded the complete solo violin works of Émile Sauret for Naxos Records, and appears on two albums released by Nonesuch Records: a string quartet composed by Laurie Anderson, and Pulse by Steve Reich with the International Contemporary Ensemble (which they performed in Carnegie Hall as part of Steve Reich’s 80th birthday celebration in 2016). Her mentors include Donald Weilerstein and the late violinist and composer Robert Mann, with whom she studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Juilliard, respectively.
In addition to her composition and performing career, Wiancko is director and curator of Antenna Cloud Farm, a music festival, arts retreat, and community organization based in western Massachusetts that has been on the Boston Globe’s Top 10 Must-See summer list two years in a row. She also teaches a course on 21st century musicianship and creativity at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
[Bio from the Silkroad Ensemble Website]