About Courtney

Heralded by The New York Times as a violinist of “tireless energy and bright tone” and The Washington Post as “dangerously gifted”, Courtney Orlando specializes in the performance of contemporary and crossover music.

She is a founding member of the acclaimed new music ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, which has premiered works by and collaborated with some of the foremost composers of our time, including Hans Abrahamsen, John Adams, John Luther Adams, Oscar Bettison, Tyondai Braxton, Donnacha Dennehy, Michael Gordon, Georg Friedrich Haas, David Lang, David T. Little, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Wolfgang Rihm, Tyshawn Sorey, Augusta Read Thomas and Julia Wolfe. Performances with AWS include those at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, L.A.’s Disney Hall, the Kimmel Center, London’s Barbican Theatre, the Library of Congress, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Amsterdam’s Holland Festival, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, Merkin Hall, Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, EMPAC, Caramoor, Boston’s Gardner Museum, the Bang on a Can Marathon and in cities across Europe and Asia. The group has recorded for Nonesuch Records, Cantaloupe Music, and Indirecto.

Courtney is also a member of Ensemble Signal, a collective of musicians under the direction of conductor Brad Lubman. With Signal, she has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, L.A.’s Disney Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, The Shed, the Lincoln Center Festival, the Big Ears Festival, the Ojai Festival and the Bang on a Can Marathon. Signal has collaborated extensively with Steve Reich; the group gave the U.S. premieres of Reich’s Runner and Reich/Richter. Signal has also premiered works by Luca Francesconi, George Lewis, and Nico Muhly and has additionally collaborated with Hans Abrahamsen, Unsuk Chin, Michael Gordon, Georg Friedrich Haas, Oliver Knussen, Helmut Lachenmann, David Lang, Hilda Paredes, Kaija Saariaho and Julia Wolfe. The group has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, Mode, and Cantaloupe Music.

At the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the fall of 2008, Courtney took part in the premiere of Michael Gordon’s Lightning at our feet, a multi-media song cycle on poems of Emily Dickinson.  In this work, she was able to explore her interest in simultaneously singing and playing the violin; since then, composers have written music for her that highlights this combination. Additional ensemble work includes performances with Dublin’s Crash Ensemble, the Wordless Music Orchestra, Princeton Pro Musica, and the Princeton Symphony. She has performed and/or recorded with Björk, the Dirty Projectors, Vampire Weekend, Yoko Ono, Sigur Rós’s Jónsi and Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, and has worked with jazz and experimental musicians Theo Bleckmann; Uri Cain; Michael Formanek; Medeski, Martin, and Wood and Joshua Redman. In addition to the aforementioned recordings with Alarm Will Sound and Signal, Courtney has recorded for Bridge, Chandos, ECM, Sonnabilis, Tzadik and Winter and Winter. 

Courtney is currently on the faculty of Wharton Arts, where she teaches violin and coaches chamber music. She also maintains a private violin studio at her home. Prior to this, Courtney was Assistant Professor of Ear Training and Sight Reading at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland. During her time at Peabody, she also founded and ran the new music ensemble Now Hear This and coached chamber music. Additionally, she was an adjunct Theory lecturer at the Eastman School of Music and Syracuse University.

She graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in violin from Temple University, and received a Master’s degree in Theory Pedagogy and a Doctoral degree in Violin Performance and Literature from Eastman.