Denise Dillenbeck has played for the Philadelphia Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Pennsylvania Ballet Theater, Philly Pops, and many other orchestras across the U.S. She is currently the Associate Concertmaster of the Tacoma Symphony. As a member of the Oregon Symphony, she was a featured soloist for several concerts, and has served as concertmaster for orchestras across the country and in England. As a member of new music group Third Angle, she gave world premiere performances of works by many of today's leading composers. She was also the Lead Teaching Artist in the Philadelphia Orchestra's Community Partnership Program, where she led urban elementary school students in experiential music learning, and directed workshops on aesthetic education for classroom teachers and music educators.Denise formed the Areté Trio with Oregon Symphony principal cello Nancy Ives and pianist John Pickett. She has performed and coached chamber music on concert series and at festivals around the country and abroad, such as the American Church of Paris, Westminster Choir College, Bravo Summer String Institute, Max Aronoff Viola Institute, the Quartet Program at Bucknell University, and Central Washington University. She has recorded solo and chamber works for the Albion and KOCH International labels.
She holds a Bachelor of Music from New England Conservatory where she studied with James Buswell, and a Master of Music from the University of Minnesota where she was Sally O'Reilly's teaching assistant and worked with Minnesota Orchestra concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis. She was a fellow at Aspen, dean of Charles Castleman's Quartet Program, program coordinator at the Philadelphia Orchestra's Strings International Music Festival, and has played for the Oregon Bach Festival, Ernest Bloch Festival, Chautauqua Music Institute, Musicorda, and the International Congress of Strings. The San Francisco Chronicle hails her playing as "simply first-rate".
