Janet Packer has established a unique career as a concert violinist and educator. Her performances demonstrate a mastery of a wide range of musical styles. As soloist with orchestra, recitalist, and recording artist, Ms. Packer’s musical intelligence and personality have won the accolades of audiences, critics, and musical colleagues.
An ardent champion of new music for the violin, Janet Packer has in recent years commissioned and premiered works for violin and piano by Vagn Holmboe, Edwin London, Mary Mageau, Juan Orrego-Salas, and Gardner Read; for solo violin by Andrew Imbrie; and for violin and orchestra by Vittorio Rieti and William Thomas McKinley. In 2011 she premiered Imaginary Variations, a major new work for violin and piano by Krzysztof Meyer. She is President of Pro Violino Foundation, Inc., whose mission is to support the creation and dissemination of contemporary violin music.
Ms. Packer’s Centaur Records CD, featuring first recordings of works for violin and piano by Charles-Marie Widor, has received critical acclaim. She can also be heard as soloist in Vittorio Rieti’s Serenata for Violin and Small Orchestra (1932) on CRI, in Gardner Read’s Five Aphorisms for Violin and Piano (1991) on Northeastern Records, and in William Thomas McKinley’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jerzy Swoboda on MMC.
Nationally recognized as a distinguished educator, Janet Packer was named the 2012 Studio Teacher of the Year by Massachusetts - American String Teachers Association. She was chair of the Conservatory string department of the Longy School of Music, Cambridge, Massachusetts, for twelve years. She gives frequent master classes at universities, music schools, and string seminars, and has been interviewed on National Public Radio and television. Her students, introduced to advanced concepts of analysis and historical style, have won competitions on state and national levels.
Janet Packer’s major orchestral appearances include performances with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony of Panama, Rochester Philharmonic, and Boston Pops Orchestra. In 2006 she toured China, performing in Fuzhou and teaching at the Shanghai Conservatory and Beijing Central Conservatory. Her 2011-12 schedule includes more than 20 recitals with three different pianists throughout the United States, including performances in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston.
Janet Packer performs on a 1697 Carlo Giuseppe Testore violin.