Nancy Dahn is a Canadian violinist. Alongside her husband, she co-founded the

Tuckamore Festival The Tuckamore Festival is a chamber music festival in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. It is traditionally held annually in August for two weeks. The festival was co-founded in 2001 by violinist Nancy Dahn and pianist Timothy Steeves, classical ...

in 2001 and is a University Research Professor of Violin and Viola at the

Memorial University of Newfoundland Memorial University of Newfoundland, also known as Memorial University or MUN (), is a public university in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, based in St. John's, with satellite campuses in Corner Brook, elsewhere in Newfoundland and ...

Education

Dahn studied at the

New England Conservatory The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The conservatory is located on Hu ...

, the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most el ...

, and the

Cleveland Institute of Music The Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) is a private music conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1920 by Ernest Bloch, it enrolls 325 students in the conservatory and approximately 1,500 students in the preparatory and continuing educatio ...

, where she earned her doctorate in violin performance.

Career

Dahn taught violin and chamber music at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1995, she joined the faculty of Music at the

. She was the University's first professor in strings. While there, she collaborated with her husband Timothy Steeves to create a musical duo named Duo Concertante. The name, which was inspired from Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, was also the first piece the duo played in 1997. By 2001, Dahn and her pianist husband Steeves launched the

together, which later earned the support of the Canadian government. That year, the duo received the 2001 Touring Performers Award from Contact East. In 2010, Duo Concertante received the Artist of the Year Award from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council. The next year, the duo commissioned and wrote

R. Murray Schafer Raymond Murray Schafer (18 July 1933 – 14 August 2021) was a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book ''The Tuning of th ...

’s Duo for Violin and Piano, which won Best Classical Composition at the 2011

Juno Award The Juno Awards, more popularly known as the JUNOS, are awards presented annually to Canadian musical artists and bands to acknowledge their artistic and technical achievements in all aspects of music. New members of the Canadian Music Hall of ...

s. In 2016, Dahn and her husband were elected Fellows of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...

. They were also promoted to University Research Professor, which the Memorial University of Newfoundland ranked above

Full Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

. The next year, Duo Concertante received the 2017 East Coast Music Award (ECMA) for Classical Recording of the Year.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dahn, Nancy Living people Canadian classical violinists Women classical violinists 21st-century Canadian violinists and fiddlers Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Canadian women academics Juilliard School alumni New England Conservatory alumni Cleveland Institute of Music alumni Cleveland Institute of Music faculty Academic staff of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Canadian women violinists and fiddlers 1968 births