Long Bio
Emily Grissing is presently a section cellist with the Winston-Salem Symphony (NC). She received a Professional Artist Certificate in cello at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) in 2014, where she studied with Dr. Brooks Whitehouse. Her lifelong passion for all of the performing arts was well served growing up in a community rich in the arts. A self-taught pianist at age two, Emily enjoyed Suzuki violin lessons at age three. Later, Emily had recorder, voice, guitar, cello, flute, piccolo, double bass, viola, and French Horn lessons. Roles in school musical theater, taking theater courses in both high school and college, and performing with a community orchestra when young strengthened Emily’s leadership skills. By middle school’s end, Emily was a seasoned principal cellist and advancing flutist. At age 17, after placing in competitions and being accepted as a special student member of her first professional orchestra, Emily realized it was the cello, not the flute, she was to focus on for her career direction.
Emily has performed as a cello soloist at the Kennedy Center and the Eastman Theatre, among others. She is also currently on the sub-lists with the Erie Philharmonic (PA) and North Carolina Symphony. In summer 2014 she participated at Colorado’s Aspen Music Festival and School with a full fellowship, also performing in a masterclass with Alisa Weilerstein. Other past summers have been with the Eastern Festival Orchestra as a String Scholar Intern, National Repertory Orchestra (NRO), National Orchestral Institute and Festival (principal positions), Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, Chautauqua Music School Festival Orchestra, and Symphony and Opera Academy of the Pacific.
In June 2011, Emily was honored to become a student at a Conducting Symposium at the Sibelius Academy working with conductors Peter Ettrup Larsen and Paula Holcomb. There she conducted the Finnish National Guard’s Band and a wind chamber group of Sibelius Academy students. While Emily thrives on her classical training and is deeply passionate performing operatic works, she treasures all forms of music genre and a wide variety of collaborations with instrumentalists, singers, dancers, composers, writers, visual artists and filmmakers alike.
Ms. Grissing, also known as an academically talented and accomplished student, has by design followed a more unusual path in both music and academics from a young age. She holds the firm belief one needs to go “outside of his/her comfort zone” to mature and strengthen character, as well as truly know and understand the world we live in today. Growing up with a condition that severely affected her vision for long periods of time, others often said it was impossible for her to accomplish or do many things. Her positive attitude, combined with strong determination and kind, persistent ways, has allowed her to achieve ambitious goals with many accolades. Among these are winning her class spelling bee in elementary school, nomination for Who’s Who Among American High School Students and later Among Community College Students, and winning a Young Woman of Distinction Special Award and Scholarship. When honing in on creative mathematical ideas as an undergraduate mathematics minor, she was nominated to Pi Mu Epsilon (the National Honorary Math Society). Emily also has a flare for learning foreign languages with ease. Bilingual in German and English from a young age, she became a German scholar in high school. She has acquired Italian, Japanese, French, Russian, Polish and American Sign Language through work or music study in a foreign country or a college course. Rather than attend a music conservatory, Emily felt her life experience would be broader to study in a university setting meeting students studying a wide variety of majors. She feels that musicians need to expose themselves to others who choose other career studies, as we depend on these persons in the future to become our audiences or to take musical instrument lessons as an avocation.
Emily began what has become a lifelong pursuit of community service at age six as a ‘Brownie.’ Her troop sang and did skits for seniors in local nursing homes. Since, she has shared her musical talents in a number of settings, including public schools, libraries, senior centers, hospice settings, and more. As a young teen she earned a service award for her many hours of volunteerism with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra as an usher and working at fundraising events. As an undergraduate, she initiated a Red Cross fundraising event for Japan’s Tsunami Disaster (in 2011). Likewise, in elementary school, she collected and sent boxes of children’s clothes and books to a flood stricken area of NC when she learned of the need.
Many of Emily’s music activities have followed her quest to support others to learn more about music or experience quality music that cannot easily come to them, by having the experience brought to them. She participated in Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival to become more seasoned with these efforts through chamber music, as well as her undergraduate music program at SUNY Fredonia. At one of these Outreach programs, she and her quartet added a ‘petting’ zoo of instruments for the young children attending the concert. Each took turns with instruction to hold and try playing the violins and cello after the concert. Emily said the looks on the children’s faces were pure delight!
Emily believes it important to nourish particularly young children and teens with the idea that there are “No Wrong Notes,” as she learned from her Music Improvisation teacher as an undergraduate. Her own quick demonstration of use of Improv. led to her teacher inviting her on a team of students to teach Improv. to over 2000 students aged 5-19 over a period of two days. She got to see firsthand the delight of many youngsters learning though their own creativity that they could make objects a musical instrument, and then join with others, also not reading music, but listening to themselves and eachother, making music that was satisfying and enjoyable.
As a teacher, Emily has taught private cello lessons to persons ages 9-21. As a volunteer she mentored the cello section of a group of talented middle school students of a youth orchestra. Over time, that role evolved to also teach the students how to prepare for auditions, supporting them through the process, as well as recording the orchestra auditions. As an undergraduate, Emily developed a course where she taught 1st-and 2nd-year cello students audition materials for orchestra auditions, modeled on her own success with the audition process for orchestras.
Emily knows learning music is a lifelong process, and music offers lifelong enjoyment and expression of thoughts and emotions for almost all!