Michiko Theurer
Violinist and visual artist Michiko Theurer is passionate about building conversations between different disciplines and experiences. She has served as the Artist in Residence for the Boulder Bach Festival, violinist in the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and performed with artists from Eighth Blackbird, the Pacifica Quartet, Trio Cavatina, and Concertante. Her recording of Toru Takemitsu’s Rocking Mirror Daybreak with violinist Sarah Briggs was released on Navona Records, together with a series of paintings she created based on Takemitsu's compositional methods. She holds a DMA in violin performance from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is currently pursuing a PhD in musicology at Stanford University.
Michi views conversations between art forms and disciplines as pathways to a deeper engagement with ideas and experiences. She frequently creates programs that interweave visual and musical compositions in contrapuntal dialogue. Together with composer and librettist Jenny Kallick, she created a multimedia visual companion to ARCHITECT, a chamber opera, using her original art, videography, and photography. The resulting work has been shown to critical acclaim in film festivals in Chicago, New York, and Milan, and was described in Opera News as “convincingly evocative of architectural thought and creativity in general.”
She has served on the faculty of the Colorado Chamber Orchestra Academy and presented master classes and educational events through the Boulder Bach Festival, Amherst College, and East Carolina University. Michi graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College with majors in English and music and received her MM from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Her teachers have included Harumi Rhodes, Edward Dusinberre, Simin Ganatra, Philipp Naegele, Bayla Keyes, and Ara Gregorian.