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. 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, is receiving 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 is chair of the string department of the Longy School of Music, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she has been a member of the violin faculty for thirty 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. Her recent performance schedule took her to concert halls in eight states, including recitals in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston. In June 2006 she toured China, giving performances in Fuzhou and teaching at the Shanghai Conservatory and Beijing Central Conservatory. In August 2006, she performed Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto with the National Symphony of Panama.
Janet Packer performs on a 1697 Carlo Giuseppe Testore violin.