Daphne Gerling
Lectureship in Viola, Valdosta State University

Violist Daphne Gerling was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and began her musical studies in Boston, MA at the age of four. A graduate of the Walnut Hill School and New England Conservatory, she went on to earn degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Jeffrey Irvine and Lynne Ramsey.
Her performances have taken her to leading venues in the U.S., Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Italy, Austria, and England, and to the Aspen, Bowdoin, Bad Leonfelden, Ciaccona, Encore, NYU, Norfolk (UK), Sarasota, and Staunton (VA) music festivals. She is a former faculty member of the preparatory departments at Oberlin and CIM, and the Shepherd School of Music’s Michael P. Hammond Preparatory Division, where she was a Brown Foundation fellow in viola and early childhood music.

From 2005-2007 Daphne was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Music in England, where she undertook the research for her doctoral dissertation entitled “Connecting Histories: Identity and Exoticism in Ernest Bloch, Rebecca Clarke and Paul Hindemith’s Viola Works of 1919.” She was awarded the title of Doctor of Musical Arts from Rice University in May 2007, where she was a student of and departmental teaching assistant to violists Karen Ritscher and James Dunham. During her time in the United Kingdom she was also active as a recitalist, was the violist for the Anglian Ensemble, and was a sought-after teacher in Cambridgeshire.  While living in Europe, she also studied with Thomas Riebl and Simon Rowland-Jones.