Alena Merimee Biography
Sixteen year-old Alena Merimee is a scholarship student in the Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studies violin with Paul Kantor and David Updegraff. Alena is the oldest of seven children and comes from a musical family; both of her parents are professional musicians and four siblings play either violin or cello. She has been a finalist or prizewinner in several major competitions, including the Stulberg International String Competition, the Concours de Musique du Canada, and the Johansen International Competition. She is two-time national finalist and prizewinner in the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) competition, as well as the winner of the 2007 Ohio American String Teachers Association (ASTA) competition, the Lakeland Symphony Young Artists Competition, and the Paducah Symphony Young Artist’s Competition.
Last year, Alena was featured performing with pianist Christopher O’Riley on National Public Radio’s “From the Top”, and as a member of the Severance Quartet, participated in the finals of the 2008 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. In December, Alena was chosen as a principle violinist for the New York String Orchestra Seminar, performing concerts with Jaime Laredo in Carnegie Hall.
Alena made her orchestral debut at the age of fourteen, performing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with both the Paducah and Lakeland Symphonies. The Paducah Symphony’s executive director wrote about Alena’s performance, “The audience response was probably the most enthusiastic I have ever heard - for any performer we've had in the last 27 years I've been associated with the Orchestra.” Alena has spent the past three summers at the Aspen Music Festival, where she was a recipient of a New Horizon’s Fellowship, an honor that provides a full scholarship to the music festival for three consecutive summers. In 2008, she was the youngest participant ever accepted into the summer chamber music festival, LyricaFest. Alena is also a musical therapy volunteer at Cleveland’s Metro Hospital, playing twice a week for critically injured patients in the hospital’s burn unit.
