String Quartet Intensive Program Directors

Catherine Cosbey of the Cavani String Quartet, leads an adventurous career as a vibrant performer and presenter of chamber music. Ms. Cosbery’s  international performing career has taken her throughout the US and abroad. She has made appearances at the Honens Festival in Calgary, Alberta, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany, Esterhazy String Quartet Festival in Hungary, Festival de Febrero in Mexico, Xenia Concerts in Toronto, the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, the Detroit Chamber Music Society, the Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall, amongst others. She has served as guest violinist with with the Afiara, Attacca, Cecilia, Tokai, and Verona Quartets, and has enjoyed collaborations with A Far Cry, Julian Rachlin, Sarah McElravy, Boris Andrianov, Richard Stoltzman, Donald Weilerstein, Peter Salaff, and James Dunham.

A founding member of the award winning Linden String Quartet, hailed as “polished, radiant and incisive” (The Strad Magazine), she has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe. She has served in the Fellowship Quartet at Yale University and the Apprentice Quartet at the Cleveland Institute of Music and performed residencies for the University of Iowa, and the University of Idaho. As a member of the Linden Quartet, Ms. Cosbey received the Gold Medal and Grand Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, Coleman Barstow Prize at the 2009 Coleman National Chamber Ensemble Competition, the 2010 Hugo Kauder Competition, and the ProQuartet Prize at the 9th Borciani String Quartet Competition. 

Ms. Cosbey and musical soulmate Katherine Dowling are proudly co-Artistic Directors of the Regina Chamber Music Festival, a week-long chamber music festival that works to bring inspiring concerts and instruction to her hometown community in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, and co-Artistic Director of Bach From The Heart, a concert experience that explores the emotional journeys of Bach’s Solo Sonatas and Partitas for Violin through music and poetry. As a member of a musical family, she often performs as part of the Cosbey Piano Quintet. Ms. Cosbey holds degrees from the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Yale University’s School of Music. Her principal mentors are Eduard Minevich, Erika Raum, Paul Kantor, Peter Salaff, and the Tokyo and Cavani Quartets.

At home Ms. Cosbey enjoys serenading her many plant pets with Bach and depicting their leaves on loaves of sourdough bread.