Violinist Tessa Lark is one of the most captivating artistic voices of our time, consistently praised by critics and audiences for her astounding range of sounds, technical agility and musical elegance. Increasingly in demand in the classical realm, in 2020 she was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category. She is also a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky, delighting audiences with programming that includes Appalachian and bluegrass music and inspiring composers to write for her.  

In addition to her performance schedule, Lark is the newly minted artistic director of the Moab Music Festival. She also continues her work as artistic director of Musical Masterworks, a chamber music series in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Her summer of 2025 included performances with the Sarasota Festival, Britt Festival, Princeton Festival, Napa Valley Festival, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Music Society SummerFest and Moab Music Festival.  

Lark’s 2025–26 season features a new concerto written for her by Lisa Bielawa. The premiere with the Louisville Orchestra took place in October 2025 and will be repeated the following month with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Other highlights of Lark’s 2025–26 season include returns to the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach, Pasadena Symphony, Tucson Symphony and Lexington Philharmonic. In recital, she debuts with the Da Camera Society of Texas and returns to The Cliburn and Oregon’s Sunriver Music Festival. She reprises Michael Torke’s violin concerto, Sky — the piece was written for her and her 2020 recording of it earned a Grammy nomination — with the San Antonio Philharmonic.  

As a chamber musician, she tours with her string trio project with composer-bassist Edgar Meyer and cellist Joshua Roman to venues including the Alabama School of Fine Arts, Shriver Hall in Baltimore, 92NY in New York City, Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara  and Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. 

Lark has performed with orchestras, recital venues and festivals around the world. She has appeared with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Philharmonic, and the Indianapolis, Knoxville and Seattle symphony orchestras, and she has been presented by Carnegie Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall and Barbican Hall, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Cal Performances, San Francisco Performances, the Seattle Chamber Music Society, Australia’s Musica Viva Festival, and the Marlboro, Mostly Mozart and Bridgehampton summer festivals.  

Lark’s most recent album, The Stradgrass Sessions, released in spring 2023, features an all-star roster of collaborators and composers, including Edgar Meyer, pianist Jon Batiste, mandolinist Sierra Hull and fiddler Michael Cleveland. The album’s selections mix original compositions by Lark and her collaborators with a sonata by Eugène Ysaÿe, a selection of Bartók violin duets arranged for violin and mandolin and the world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s STOMP. 

Lark’s debut commercial recording was the Grammy-nominated Sky, a bluegrass-inspired violin concerto written for her by Michael Torke and performed with the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Her discography also includes Fantasy (First Hand Records), featuring Fantasias by Schubert, Telemann and Fritz Kreisler; Ravel’s Tzigane; and Lark’s own composition Appalachian Fantasy. Other releases include Invention, an album for the violin-bass duo made up of Lark and bassist Michael Thurber, which comprises arrangements of Two-Part Inventions by J. S. Bach along with original compositions by both duo partners. A live performance recording of Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires was also released in 2021 by the Buffalo Philharmonic in honor of Piazzolla’s centenary. 

Lark is a recipient of the Hunt Family Award, one of Lincoln Center’s prestigious Emerging Artist Awards, as well as a 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant. She was silver medalist in the 9th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and winner of the 2012 Naumburg International Violin Competition. She is a graduate of the New England Conservatory and earned her Artist Diploma at The Juilliard School, where she studied with Sylvia Rosenberg, Ida Kavafian and Daniel Phillips. Her primary mentors include Cathy McGlasson, Kurt Sassmannshaus, Miriam Fried and Lucy Chapman. She plays a ca. 1600 G.P. Maggini violin on loan from an anonymous donor through the Stradivari Society of Chicago. tessalark.com