Brett Walfish - Viola

Brett Walfish, violist and Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Rushmore Music Festival, has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Ireland, Italy, and Israel. His concerts have taken him to Tel Aviv Opera House, the National Music Museum, the Historic Blackfriars Theatre and Carnegie Hall, among others. Praised by the conductor David Effron for a warm sound full of a “myriad of colors,”

Brett is an expressive and charismatic performer. He has collaborated with world-renowned artists including Philip Setzer, Atar Arad, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Stephan Barratt-Due, Annie Fullard, Michael Klotz, Rudolf Koelman, Misha Vitenson, and Hillel Zori. He has also performed with the highly acclaimed conductorless chamber orchestra, A Far Cry, as well as the New World Symphony.

Mr. Walfish is a devoted teacher of violin, viola, and chamber music, and has studied string pedagogy with the legendary Mimi Zweig at the Indiana University and completed a two-year long-term Suzuki teacher training certification at the School for Strings in New York City. He frequently travels across the United States for guest masterclasses and teaches privately through the Professional Violin Studio in Rapid City and Spearfish. His primary mentors included Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson String Quartet, Nicholas Cords of the Brooklyn Rider Quartet, and Martha Katz and Atar Arad of the Cleveland Quartet. Mr. Walfish holds a Master of Music degree and a Graduate Diploma in Viola Performance from the New England Conservatory, as well as a Bachelor of Music degree from Indiana University Jacob’s School of Music.
His students have been accepted to the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, Harvard University, Cornell University, among others.