Emilia Mettenbrink, a violinist with the Minnesota Opera Orchestra, is also a Principal Second Violin of the Sphinx Virtuosi, and a Minneapolis native. In addition to her work with the Minnesota Opera and Sphinx Virtuosi, she plays often with both the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Born in 1979, she began violin studies at the age of 3 and won the Minnesota Sinfonia Young Artist Competition at the age of 9. She went on to study violin performance with Paul Kantor at the University of Michigan and received a graduate degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with private teacher, David Perry. While in Madison, Emilia served as the Assistant Concertmaster for the Madison Symphony Orchestra as well as playing for the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. She then moved to Miami where she spent four years with the New World Symphony Orchestra as a rotating principal and soloist. Emilia has a love for chamber music and enjoys splitting her time between large and small ensemble performance opportunities. Her summer endeavors include chamber opera performances with the Mill City Summer Opera, and both small ensemble and orchestra performances with the Lakes Area Music Festival.
In the summer of 2020, in the wake of the pandemic, Emilia decided to start performing small works every evening from her tiny balcony in the Ramsey Hill neighborhood of St Paul, MN and from that endeavor, tinybalconyConcerts was born. She played all summer and brought in colleagues in music and dance to join her as she serenaded her neighbors as they all made it through a trying time. Emilia always had a love for sharing her passion for collaboration, but a discovered a new love for curating performance and embracing new ways of performing and bringing art out of the concert halls and into the streets and homes of her community.
Emilia and tinybalconyConcerts can and would love to create and perform for you.