New
York City native Baird Dodge joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a violist
in 1996. He moved to the second violin section later that same year, and he was
appointed principal second violin by Daniel Barenboim in 2002.
Dodge
studied violin and viola from an early age and attended the precollege division
of the Juilliard School. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from
Swarthmore College in 1990, and a master’s degree in music from the State
University of New York–Stony Brook in 1994. His teachers have included Helen
Kwalwasser, Gregory Fulkerson and Joyce Robbins.
An
avid chamber musician, Dodge has collaborated with such artists as Daniel
Barenboim, Isadore Cohen, Ida Kavafian, Samuel Rhodes, David Sawyer and Pinchas
Zukerman, and he also has appeared as a guest artist on several occasions with
the Chicago and Colorado string quartets. He has performed at the Bravo!
Colorado Festival, the Taos Chamber Music Festival, the Marlboro Music Festival
and on Music from Marlboro tours.
Dodge
has a special interest in contemporary music. He often has performed works by
his father Charles Dodge, including the premiere of his Violin Etudes at
Columbia University’s Miller Theater in 1994 and a recording of the Viola Elegy
for New Albion Records in 1992. In 2006, he premiered and recorded Carillon
Sky, a chamber concerto written for him by Augusta Read Thomas, on the
CSO’s MusicNOW series with Oliver Knussen conducting, and he later
performed the work with Orchestra 2001 in Philadelphia. He also has championed
the works of composer James Matheson, giving premieres of several pieces, including the Violin Concerto, with Esa-Pekka Salonen and
the CSO in 2011.
Dodge
resides in Chicago with his wife, violinist-violist Jennifer Marlas, and their
daughter Lida.
September 2012
