Sheila Browne

Sheila Browne is an American-Irish violist, recording artist, and professor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and New York University, Steinhardt School. Ms. Browne has given solo and chamber music concerts in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. She currently serves on the Executive Board of the American Viola Society and teaches at California Summer Music Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, and Viva Virginia! Ms. Browne was the violist of the Gotham and Arianna string quartets.

During the summer of 2009 Sheila became the first viola professor ever to teach in Kurdistan for the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq.

She has recorded CDs on the Albany Records, Centaur, ERM, and Nonesuch Records labels, and has premiered new works by composers including Dan Coleman, Lawrence Dillon, and Kenneth Jacobs.

Sheila Browne studied with Karen Tuttle at the Juilliard School, where Ms. Browne was her teaching assistant for four years. She later studied in Germany with Kim Kashkashian after winning a DAAD grant. She also was Karen Ritscher's teaching assistant at Rice University's Shepherd School, where the Gotham Quartet was in Paul Katz's String Quartet Residency Program.

Browne's teaching style is influenced in part by Karen Tuttle's Coordination System, the principals of the Alexander Technique, and the Feldenkrais Method.