About
Violist Daphne Gerling currently enjoys a versatile and dynamic career as a teacher, chamber musician, recitalist, adjudicator and solo performer. She currently serves as Senior Artist Teacher of viola and chamber music, and Associate Director of the Summer String Institute at the University of North Texas College of Music, where she has taught since 2011.
Her performances have taken her to leading venues in the United States, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Italy, Austria, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Honduras, Portugal, Vietnam, and New Zealand, and to music festivals including Aspen, Bowdoin, Encore, NYU, Sarasota, Bad Leonfelden, Norfolk (UK), Staunton (VA), Düsseldorf-Benrath, Internationale Händel Festspiele Karlsruhe, and Neuburg, Bavaria. Born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, she is a graduate of the Walnut Hill School for the Arts and New England Conservatory, and holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Rice University, where she studied with Jeffrey Irvine, Lynne Ramsey, Karen Ritscher and James Dunham. She furthered her studies with Thomas Riebl, Simon Rowland-Jones and Heidi Castleman, as well as Victoria Chiang, Daniel Foster, Joan DerHovsepian and Ivo Jan Van Der Werff.
Keenly involved with the American Viola Society, Dr. Gerling hosted the AVS's blog "From the Studio" with Dr, Susan Dubois and the UNT Viola Studio for the 2015-16 academic year, and continues as Editor in 2017. She collaborates with colleagues internationally, having hosted gatherings of violists in Porto Alegre and Brasília, Brazil in 2012 and 2013, and participating in the International Viola Society Congress in Cidade do Porto, Portugal in 2014 and Brazilian Viola Congresses (I ENVIO) in João Pessoa, Brazil in 2015. In October 2016 she was a featured performer at both the International Viola Congress in Cremona, Italy, and the II ENVIO in Florianópolis, Brazil. In 2017 she will perform and present research at the 44th International Viola Congress in Wellington, New Zealand, as well as at the College Music Society National Conference in San Antonio, TX.
From 2005-2007 Dr. Gerling was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Music in England, and violist of the Anglian Ensemble. Between 2008 and 2017 she has been invited as a guest artist and clinician at James Madison University, Rice University, Illinois State University, Northern Illinois University, Florida State University, University of South Carolina, Sewanee, University of Tennessee, Middle Tennessee State University, Texas Tech University, University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of New Mexico, University of Rhode Island, Ball State University, Universidad Nacional Autonónoma de Honduras, Ho Chi Min City Conservatory and Hanoi National Academy of Music, Vietnam, and the Federal Universities of Rio Grande do Sul, Brasília (UNB), Belo Horizonte (UFMG), Santa Catarina (UDESC), Rio de Janeiro (Uni-Rio) and Uberlândia, Brazil.
From 2008-2010 she served as Lecturer in Viola at Valdosta State University (GA), and from 2007-14 she served as faculty chamber music coordinator at the Festival de Cordas Nathan Schwartzman in Uberlândia, Brazil, where she also made several concerto appearances. She has adjudicated for the 2015 New Mexico Symphony Guild Competition, the 2013 Houston Symphony Orchestra league competition, and the Primeiro Concurso Internacional de Violistas-CONVIO, in Brazil in 2015. In the summers she has taught on the faculty at Wintergreen, Sewanee, the Rafael Trio Chamber Music Workshops in New Hampshire and the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts, with whom she has broadcast twice for National Public Radio. As a baroque violist, she has served as principal violist for the Karlsruhe International Händel Festspiele Opernwerkstatt at the Badische Stadtstheater, and joins the Washington Bach Consort in 2017. She performs with Dallas’ Chamber Music International and the Art Music series, as well as Sounds Modern in Fort Worth. She has also been a featured artist of Colorado Mesa University's Artist Recital Series. Dr. Gerling’s students currently hold teaching and orchestral positions throughout Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, England, South Africa, Korea, and Brazil.