Sara DeCorso

Sara DeCorso grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, in a musical household; both of her parents were clarinetists. She began her violin studies with Dr. Kathleen Butler-Hopkins and went on to earn her Bachelor’s degree from the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, where she studied with Marilyn McDonald. She later completed both her Master’s and Doctoral degrees at Stony Brook University in New York under the guidance of Mitchell Stern.

After working with early music specialists including Arthur Haas, Phoebe Carrai, Manfred Kraemer, and Kenneth Slowik, Sara decided to immerse herself more fully in historical performance practice. In 2002, she was awarded a grant from the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund of Boston to study baroque violin with Enrico Gatti at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague.

Since then, she has performed with a wide range of period-instrument orchestras and chamber ensembles, including B’Rock, Anima Eterna Brugge, FestspielOrchester Göttingen, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Musica ad Rhenum, the Van Swieten Society, and New Collegium. With New Collegium, she received a Diapason d’Or and a prize at the International Van Wassenaer Competition.

As concertmaster, Sara has worked with conductors and directors including René Jacobs, Peter Dijkstra, Andreas Spering, Paul van Nevel, and Claudio Ribeiro. She has performed at major concert halls and festivals throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia, and has taught at workshops in the United States and Brazil.

Sara plays a violin made by Louis Socquet in Paris in 1781.