Keeley Brooks is an eighteen year-old violinist from the Methow Valley in rural Washington state. She has been playing the violin for 12 1/2 years and is a first-year student at Yale University. She currently studies with Gregory Lewis.
At Yale, Keeley performs with the Davenport Pops Orchestra and Berkeley Chamber Orchestra. She also ushers a variety of concerts and loves sight-reading chamber pieces with friends. She is very interested in how music intersects with social change and hopes to explore this further in her academic studies. Keeley began her studies with the Suzuki method and completed books 1-7 with local teacher Pam Hunt. For middle and high school, she drove two hours each way to study with the concertmaster of the Wenatchee Symphony, Michelle Vaughn. Growing up in a very small town, Keeley had to find creative ensemble and performance opportunities. She played in a variety of regional and summer orchestras and was a member of the Papillion String Quartet for five years. During her senior year, she performed virtually as a first violinist in the Portland Youth Philharmonic. Her summer engagements have included the Marrowstone Music Festival (Principal 2nd in the summer of 2019), the Lake Chelan Bach Festival, University of Denver Lamont Summer Academy and the Philadelphia International Music Festival Solo Preparatory Program.
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Keeley loves participating in her local community through teaching practice lessons, playing at weddings and other events, and performing in projects such as her summer 2020 series Covid Concerts.
In 2013 she was the first winner of the Christine Cherrington Merit Award Competition and in 2018 was a silver medalist in a strings division of the Spokane MusicFest Northwest Competition. In 2018, Keeley also won the Wenatchee Symphony’s Angela Schuster Svendsen Memorial Young Musician Competition and made her concerto debut playing the first movement of Concerto in E minor Opus 64 by Mendelssohn. While at home in the Methow Valley, you can often find Keeley playing her violin outside, hiking, running, skiing, and enjoying time with friends and family. At Yale, she enjoys taking a variety of music classes, meeting new friends, and experiencing lots of new musical opportunities! |