Kitty Amaral is a 22-year-old violinist from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. In recent years she has had the honor of performing at venues such as Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, Buckingham Palace (for Princess Alexandra), Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, and the Harvard Musical Association, among other locations. As well as being deeply passionate about solo violin repertoire, she is an avid chamber musician, and finds joy in many genres of music. She first heard an fell in love with the sounds of Old-time and Bluegrass Music at the age of 6. In 2013, on a whim for a summer fiddle contest, Kitty formed the band; “Kitty & the Stray Cats,” and was soon playing at folk and bluegrass festivals up and down the East Coast. In 2019, Kitty attended the Heifetz Institute for the first time, dazzling patrons with her multifaceted talents both in the concert hall and under the Heifetz Hootenanny Tent. Kitty will be attending the Heifetz Institute for the fourth time in 2025, as full-scholarship member of the prestigious Heifetz Chamber Music Seminar, the Institute’s “program within a program,” under the tutelage of renowned instructors Shmuel Ashkenasi of the Curtis Institute, Ralph Kirshbaum of the University of Southern California, and Heifetz Artistic Director Nicholas Kitchen. This past spring, she earned her Bachelor’s degree from New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts. She is currently continuing her studies as a first-year masters student at NEC, where she studies with Miriam Fried as a recipient of a Dean’s Scholarship.