“Ingrid Matthews is well established as one of today’s most respected baroque violinists. She won first prize in the prestigious Erwin Bodky International Competition for Early Music in 1989, and in 1990 joined Toronto’s Tafelmusik, with whom she performed extensively on three continents in venues such as the Proms and the Barbican Center of London, the Stuttgart and Festival, the Utrecht Festival, and the Mostly Mozart Festival of New York. She worked with many other leading North American period-instrument ensembles as well, including Philharmonia Baroque of San Francisco, Joshua Rifkin’s Bach Ensemble of New York, and the American Bach Soloists of San Francisco, before founding the Seattle Baroque Orchestra in 1994 with harpsichordist Byron Schenkman. Matthews served as Music Director of SBO for 19 years, creating a beloved Seattle series as well as touring from Vermont to Dubai, before stepping down from that position in 2013.

In addition to duo work with Schenkman, Ingrid Matthews is the violinist for the celebrated group Musica Pacifica, and she has collaborated with most of the leading figures on the American early music scene. Her career as a chamber musician has taken her to such venues as the Frick Collection (New York), the Boston Early Music Festival, the Berkeley Festival, Netwoork voor Oude Muziek (the Netherlands), the Getty Center (LA), the Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque Society, Early Music Vancouver, Woodstock Concerts, the Cambridge Society for Early Music, the Newberry Library (Chicago), CBC-Toronto, the San Francisco Early Music Society, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington DC) and the Library of Congress, among many others. From 1995 to 2002, she served as first violinist for the acclaimed ensemble for 17th-century music La Luna.

As a guest director, Matthews has worked with the New York Collegium, the Magnolia Festival Orchestra, the Victoria (BC) Symphony, the Bloomington Early Music Festival Orchestra, and led the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra on an 11-concert tour of Australia; she has appeared as concerto soloist with Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Houston’s Ars Lyrica, the Bach Sinfonia of Washington DC, Musica Angelica of Los Angeles, Les Idees Heureuses and Les Voix Humaine of Montreal, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, New Trinity Baroque Orchestra of Atlanta, and many others.

Among the most-recorded baroque violinists of her generation, Matthews has won international critical acclaim for a discography which ranges from the earliest solo violin repertoire through the great Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach. Of the latter recording, the critic for American Record Guide writes, “This superb recording is my top recommendation for this music… on either modern or period instruments”; Classical Music Listening Guide has called it “”the finest complete set of these works.””

Ingrid Matthews has taught at Cornish College of the Arts (Seattle), Indiana University, the University of Southern California, the University of Toronto, and leading early music workshops, and has given masterclasses and led student ensembles at many diverse institutions including Oberlin College and the San Francisco Conservatory. Matthews is a graduate of Indiana University, where she studied with Josef Gingold and Stanley Ritchie.

She also plays jazz and swing styles and is active as a visual artist.”