Instructor
Violin and Viola
Contact Information
Cogswell 217
Courses
- Applied Violin
- Applied Viola
- Class Strings
- String Ensemble
Education
- DMA, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- GPD, Peabody Institute
- MM, Longy School of Music of Bard College
- BM, Longy School of Music of Bard College
Biography
Bringing 15 years of teaching experience and a passion for cultivating growth mindset in her studio, violinist and violist Kaleigh Acord is delighted to join the IUP Music, Theatre, and Dance Department. She served three years as Prof. Laura Bossert’s teaching assistant at Longy School of Music and Wellesley College from 2012 to 2015, teaching lessons to undergraduate and graduate students and team-teaching studio classes with Prof. Bossert.
In addition to assistant teaching and private studio teaching, Acord has held faculty positions at Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra’s Music Makers, UW-Madison’s Community Music School, Lyricafest Chamber Music Festival, and Madison Conservatory, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit which seeks to address access barriers in music education. In June 2024, she coordinated the first-ever Madison Conservatory and Friends Chamber Music Workshop, which brought 20 local students together for six days of rehearsals and to Capitol Lakes Retirement (Madison, WI) for a final benefit concert in support of Madison Conservatory. Several participants gained their very first chamber music experience through the Madison Conservatory and Friends program.
Dedicated to cultivating relationships with living composers, Acord’s debut album comprises six American works written from 2000 to 2019. Twenty-First Century American Storytellers is available to stream on Spotify. Two of the six works were written specifically for her. She is also featured on Ava Shadmani’s 2024 release, I Will Greet the Sun Again, a compilation of modern classical chamber music inspired by Persian folk music.
Acord completed her doctoral studies in Violin Performance at the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music in 2020. At UW, she studied with Soh-Hyun Park Altino, participated in several of the most ambitious student chamber music programs in the school’s recent history, and held the highly esteemed Paul Collins Fellowship from 2017 to 2020. She earned a graduate performance diploma from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, supported in part by the Valerie SIingluff Violin Scholarship, and holds both a master’s of music and an undergraduate diploma from the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA. Her other primary teachers include Violaine Melancon, Laura Bossert, and James Batts.
In March 2014, Kaleigh made her radio debut on WQXR’s McGraw Hill Financial Young Artist Showcase, playing Schoenfield’s “Souvenirs for Violin and Piano.”