Daniel Phillips — Violin
Violinist Daniel Phillips enjoys a distinguished career as a chamber musician, soloist, and teacher. He is a founding member of the Orion String Quartet, which for more than three decades has been a regular presence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. With the quartet, he has toured internationally and recorded the complete quartets of Beethoven and Leon Kirchner. Together with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, Phillips also serves as Co-Artistic Director of Music from Angel Fire, one of New Mexico’s premier chamber music festivals.
A graduate of The Juilliard School and winner of the 1976 Young Concert Artists competition, Phillips studied with his father, Eugene Phillips, and with renowned pedagogues Ivan Galamian, Sally Thomas, Nathan Milstein, Sandor Végh, and George Neikrug.
Phillips has appeared as a soloist with orchestras across the United States, including the Boston, Houston, New Jersey, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, and Yakima Symphonies. His festival appearances span Chamber Music Northwest, the Spoleto Festival USA, the Chesapeake Music Festival, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, where he has performed every season since 1979. He is also a longtime participant in the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England.
An experienced educator, Phillips serves on the faculties of the Mannes School of Music, Juilliard, the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, and the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and he teaches each summer at the Heifetz International Music Institute and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar at Stanford.
Phillips is a former member of the Bach Aria Group and has toured and recorded for Sony Classical in a quartet with violinist Gidon Kremer, violist Kim Kashkashian, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He has served as a judge at the Seoul International Violin Competition (2018), the Leipzig International Bach Competition (2022)—where he himself won third prize in 1976—and will serve as a judge for the Bartók World Competition in Budapest in 2025.
Phillips lives with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, and their two dachshunds on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.