Melinda Daetsch, viola Melinda Daetsch began playing the violin at the age of four at Ithaca Talent Education, where she also had the opportunity to play for Shinichi Suzuki and with his students from Japan. She discovered the viola at age 12 when her teachers started the Ithaca Chamber Music Summer Institute where she happily became (bilingual) with violin and viola and fell in love with chamber music in the process. Daetsch holds a Master of Music degree in viola performance from The Juilliard School. While at Juilliard her quartet received acclaim from The New York Times for their performance of Arnold Schoenberg's seldom heard work Ode to Napoleon on the FOCUS! Festival of Contemporary Music. Daetsch has also studied chamber music with Felix Galamir, Paul Docktor, Raphael Hillyer, and Glen Dicterow. Her primary viola teachers were Karen Ritscher and Karen Tuttle. She also holds a BA with honors in comparative religion from Harvard University. During her four years at Harvard, she worked closely with composer and chamber music coach Leon Kirchner and taught 28 young Suzuki students in a program supported through the Massachusetts council of the Arts for low income families. ...As guest artist at the 2015 National Flute Association conference, Daetsch performed in the Library of Congress chamber music discoveries concert, and she has also performed as guest artist in chamber music concerts at the International Society of Bassists convention and at the Double Reed national convention. She performs regularly with colleagues from The Hartt School on the faculty concert series, at the Simsbury Chamber Music Festival, and with colleagues from Ithaca College on the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra Chamber Music series. She has held titled chairs with the Pennsylvania Centre Chamber Orchestra and the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra (N.Y.), and has performed with the Riverside Symphony (N.Y.), Bern Sinfonietta and Orchestra Symphonique Neuchatelois (Switzerland), Syracuse Symphony, Charleston Symphony (S.C.), Key West Symphony (Fla.), and with the Hartford (Conn.) and Springfield (Mass.) Symphonies.   University of Hartford Melinda Daetsch