BIOGRAPHY
SHORT BIO
Ledah Finck is a violinist, violist, improviser, and composer based in NYC. A passionate performer, creator, and curator of contemporary classical and experimental music, she is a co-founder of the Bergamot Quartet, as well as Tropos (collective of composers and improvisers) and earspace ensemble (contemporary music ensemble based in Raleigh, NC). As a composer, she has been commissioned by Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound/Now Hear This, Ayane and Paul, the Bridge Ensemble, and The Peabody Community Chorus among others. Her music embodies a desire to create and share a sound-world in which the classical tradition, the folk music with which she grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and an extensive improvisatory sensibility can be in productive dialogue.
In 2019 she was invited to perform as part of the Sitka Summer Music Festival and the Lucerne Festival Alumni tour. With the Bergamot Quartet, she participated in the Ensemble Modern Chamber Music Academy in Innsbruck, the Quatuor Diotima Academy in France, the Next Festival of Emerging Artists, the Banff Centre Evolution of the String Quartet program, and the Young Artist Development Series in El Paso, TX. Ledah has also participated in Ensemble Modern's Klangspuren Academy, the Bang on a Can summer institute at MASS MoCA, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Yellow Barn Young Artists Program. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in violin performance and composition from the Peabody Conservatory, where she studied with Herbert Greenberg, Oscar Bettison, and Judah Adashi, and studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Kenan Scholarship, a full fellowship for musical and academic merit. She plays a 2012 violin by her father, David Finck.
LONG BIO
Ledah Finck moves fluidly through worlds as a musician, performing her own compositions and appearing frequently as a classical soloist and chamber musician, fiddle and jazz player, and improviser.
An active interpreter and creator of contemporary classical music, Ledah is a co-creator of the Bergamot Quartet, a string quartet that plays the music of living composers. She is also a member since 2022 of Tropos, a collective quartet of composers/improvisers, alongside Yuma Uesaka, Phillip Golub, and Aaron Edgcomb, and of Freddy & Sally, a duo with Eli Greenhoe whose original music is inspired by Appalachian folk. She is currently working on her third solo album project/first full-length solo album, A Wild Wind.
Ledah's compositions have been commissioned by Nick Photinos and Andy Hudson, Paul Wiancko and Ayane Kozasa, confluss duo, the Bridge Ensemble with whom she was the 2017-2018 composer-in-residence, Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Jennifer Curtis, the Baltimore Chamber Choir, Maria Lambros, and the Peabody String Sinfonia, among others. Drawing from her versatile musical interests and training, she has written prolifically for primarily small ensembles, including duos, trios, and quartets. She was awarded a New Music USA grant in 2019 to write a 20 minute work for the Bergamot Quartet + Terry Sweeney on drum kit, entitled In the Brink, and a 2026 Chamber Music America commissioning grant to support the composition of a new album from the collective modern jazz ensemble, Tropos, of which she is a member. She regularly composes for Bergamot Quartet, Tropos, Freddy & Sally, and her solo songwriting project.
Ledah was a recipient in 2012 of the University of North Carolina's Kenan Music Scholarship, a full scholarship offered to four students a year for musical and academic merit. She attended UNC Chapel Hill under the teaching of Richard Luby and Jennifer Curtis. Her undergraduate degree in violin performance was completed in 2016, and in 2018 she was awarded masters degrees in both violin and composition in the studios of Herbert Greenberg and Oscar Bettison. In 2022, with Bergamot Quartet as the inaugural Cuker & Stern Graduate String Quartet in Residence, she received an Artist Diploma under the mentorship of the JACK Quartet.
She has participated as a performer at the Banff Evolution of the String Quartet workshop, Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Quatuor Diotima Academy in France with the Bergamot Quartet, the Sitka Summer Music Festival led by cellist Zuill Bailey, the Lucerne Festival Academy and alumni tour, the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, Bang on a Can festival, the Kneisel Hall Chamber Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Yellow Barn Young Artist Program (for violin in 2012 and composition in 2014), the Green Mountain Chamber Music Institute, and the Eastern Music Festival.
She grew up in Boone, North Carolina and plays a 2013 violin, a 2016 viola , and a 2025 Hardanger D'Amore by her father, David Finck, as well as a guitar made in 1973 by her grandfather, Henry Finck.