ABOUT CAROLINE

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Canadian cellist Caroline Stinson’s career spans a performance life performing with internationally acclaimed string quartets, varied chamber music groups from cello quartet to piano quartet, concerti from baroque to commissioned, duo partnerships with piano, free improvisation, and most recently, baroque cello. She is recognized for her decades of deep creative collaboration with living composers and a musical voice expressed through beauty of sound and harmonic resonance. Caroline has performed across North America and Europe with concert invitations that include Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Museum of Modern Art’s Summergarden Series, Bargemusic and Le Poisson Rouge in New York, Boston’s Gardner Museum, Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian; the Koelner Philharmonie, Lucerne Festival and Cité de la Musique in Europe, and the Centennial and Winspear Centres in Canada. As cellist of the Ciompi String Quartet at Duke University since 2018, she has toured the US, Taiwan, Italy, and China. She is a regular guest at summer festivals across the US and abroad and leads Masterclasses at Domaine Forget in Québec.

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Caroline’s ongoing documentary series Origin Story (originstorymusic.org) is a multi-disciplinary resource in which film narrates a musical work’s journey from compositional roots to collaboratively interpreted performance. Each story (one piece, one composer) in the series includes in-depth exploratory work with the composer, a score annotated with composer/performer comments and markings, interviews, and a resulting performance. Origin Story aims to reveal the secrets behind the shared expression of the composer/performer partnership. Ms. Stinson will release Presences for solo cello and string quintet next year, as well as a full disc by the same name marking the complete recording of music for cello by John Harbison. A Duke Moment with the Ciompi Quartet was released on New Focus in 2025 and she has a discography of almost two dozen CDs created over twenty years of playing new chamber music in New York. She recorded multiple Bridge Records albums with the Lark Quartet from 2009-2018 (with pianists Gary Graffman and Jeremy Denk) featured and praised on the BBC, Gramophone Magazine, WQXR and the NY Times, and her Albany Records debut: Lines – European Lineages in American Music was released in 2011.

Caroline taught at The Juilliard School from 2008-2018 and earned degrees with distinction from Cleveland (CIM), the Hochschule für Musik, Köln, and the Artist Diploma from Juilliard. She is grateful to perform and teach in equal parts due to the brilliance of her own teachers: Tanya Prochazka, Alan Harris, Maria Keligel, and Joel Krosnick. Ms. Stinson serves as a Professor of the Practice and Director of Chamber Music at Duke University, where she received the Robert B. Cox Award for outstanding achievement in undergraduate teaching in 2024. With her husband Andrew Waggoner, Caroline is co-Artistic Director of the Weekend of Chamber Music, a summer festival in the Southern Catskills Mountains of NY.

Caroline performs on a cello by Thomas Dodd from 1800 and a Baroque cello by Wolfgang Schnabl from 2022.

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    03
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    2027
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    06
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    2027

    Ciompi Quartet | Cultural Crossroads

    Dvorak in America with baritone and R. Carlos Nakai, native flutes
    Cedar Rapids, Iowa | Overland Park, Kansas
FULL CALENDAR

"Ms. Stinson’s excellent teaching has brought to light many important aspects of cello playing. As a great example, her teaching approach emphasizes musicality as integral to the development of technique, instead of as a component of music that comes after the technique."
–Cassandra Marcussen

TEACHING

Caroline Stinson joined the Duke University Faculty in 2018 as Associate Professor of the Practice of Music. In 2019 she became Director of the Chamber Music Program, which has grown to more than 80 students and 2 dozen ensembles. Previously she taught cello and chamber music at The Juilliard School in New York, as Assistant Faculty for Joel Krosnick and Juilliard Pre-College from 2009-2018.

Caroline gives masterclasses at Universities and Conservatories across Canada, the US, Mexico and Europe, and through her extensive chamber music work has been an Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Iowa, SUNY Buffalo and Syracuse University.  She regularly teaches for the NYU Summer Strings Program and at Columbia University.

In Durham, Caroline’s local cello studio is made up of Duke Undergraduates pursuing all majors including music, and local cellists of all ages. Her former high school students have gone on to attend Peabody Conservatory, Stanford University, Brown University and Harvard.

"Caroline Stinson inhabits the role of interpreter with true purpose.
The mission of rendering music expressive and exciting
is one she makes her own every time she plays."
–Anna Weesner, Composer

"Stinson's impassioned and compelling renditions, coupled with an inner warmth and calm that are truly remarkable… and what about the tone that Stinson produces from the instrument? Absolutely impeccable and sublime."
–Recording Review Classical.net

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E-MAIL

caroline.stinson@duke.edu

"Stinson… performed with conviction and flair."
–NYTimes

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