Yolanda Bruno, violin - Guest Faculty

Violinist Yolanda Bruno (1989) has been praised for her "total control of her instrument with infinite variety in the sound palette" (La Presse) and was recently named on CBC’s 30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians under 30.

Yolanda has performed across North America and Europe including solos with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, L'Orchestre Métropolitain, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas and the London Mozart Players. She has appeared in festivals including the Montreal Chamber Music Festival, the Ottawa Chamberfest, Toronto Summer Music Festival, the BBC Proms and the International Musicians’ Seminar Prussia Cove.  Yolanda’s performances have been broadcast on CBC Radio 2, ICI Musique as well as on BBC Radio 3. A devoted chamber musician, Yolanda has collaborated with Pinchas Zukerman, Menahem Pressler and Levon Chilingirian.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships, most recently winning the 2017 Isabel Overton Bader Violin Competition. She is the recipient of Canada Council’s Virginia Parker Award (2015) as well as the grand prize at the OSM Standard Life Competition (2013) and best performed work by a Canadian composer. She is also a three-time recipient of the Sylva Gelber Career Development Award.

Yolanda is passionate about her role in engaging music in the community in Canada and abroad. She has performed and presented workshops in schools, carparks, long-term care facilities, hospitals and airports. Yolanda has worked with young people through the Multi-Story Orchestra’s school concerts in South London, with the East London Youth Orchestra and with the Youth of the Americas. 

Raised in Ottawa, Yolanda completed studies with Jonathan Crow at McGill University, with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, UK and later with Julia Wedman on Baroque violin. Yolanda comes from a family of musicians. Her mother is a violin teacher and sister, Carmen Bruno, is a cellist. She is a contributor on CBC Radio 2’s In Concert program. Her broadcasts explore a variety of classical music performances happening in Canada in interesting and unexpected locations.

Yolanda performs on the c. 1700 'Taft' Stradivari violin, on generous loan from the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank.

This fine violin is a characteristic example of the early part of Antonio Stradivari's “Golden Period”. It is traditionally said to have been in the possession of Albert Caressa, Paris, who passed it to Rudolf Wurlitzer in Cincinnati, Ohio. Around 1915, Mr. Wurlitzer sold the violin to Mrs. Charles Phelps Taft, one of the founders of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and wife of the Cincinnati philanthropist Charles P. Taft, brother of William Howard Taft, 37th President and 10th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Mrs. Taft presented the violin to Emil Heermann, the concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, for his use. Following the death of Mr. Taft, the violin was sold to the private collector and amateur violinist Ernest Ruder of Cincinnati in 1940, where it remained until 1987, at which point it was sold by Jacques Français to another owner.