Violinist Raina Arnett performs internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player. Her recent festival appearances include the London Jazz Festival (UK), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Grafenegg Festival (Austria), Festival PAAX GNP (Mexico), Creative Dialogues XI (Finland), Bach Virtuosi Festival (USA), and Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend (USA). As an orchestral player, she has performed under the baton of many esteemed conductors including Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Brad Lubman, Gabor Takacs-Nagy, Alondra de la Parra, David Zinman, and David Robertson. She has collaborated as a chamber musician with members of groups such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Modern, and the London Symphony Orchestra.
During the 2022-23 season, Raina performed as a member of the Southbank Sinfonia in London, with whom she frequently served as concertmaster, toured throughout the UK and Italy, and performed as a soloist on Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending. Other highlights of recent and upcoming seasons include leading the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra in Switzerland; performing at Carnegie Hall and National Sawdust with Ensemble Signal; leading the Southbank Sinfonia in a sold-out performance at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Rome; and performing as a soloist with the New Amsterdam Symphony (NYC).
Passionate about contemporary music, Raina is a founder of the contemporary group the Glass Clouds Ensemble, a chamber music collective which performs imaginative concerts of classical & contemporary music on environmental themes. They have been invited to artist residencies at the Yellow Barn Institute, the Banff Centre, and the Avaloch Farm Music Institute. Recent and upcoming collaborations include projects in partnership with Greenwood Cemetery, the James Cohan Gallery, Anita Rogers Gallery, Tenri Institute, Earth Matter NY, Music for Food, and the Brooklyn New Music Collective. The Glass Clouds Ensemble is a recipient of grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Chamber Music America, and the Juilliard School.
As a teacher, Raina instructs music theory and coaches chamber music at the Chamber Music Center of New York, and has a small studio of private students. Raina is a passionate and supportive mentor to her students and enjoys the collaborative process of finding individualized solutions that work best for each learner. She believes that an education in the arts serves a vitally important role in creating thoughtful, empathetic, and motivated members of our society. You can find more about her teaching background and philosophies here.
Raina has also served as a tutor for the theory department at Juilliard under the supervision of Professor Steven Laitz. As a theorist, Raina studied contemporary music at the IRCAM Center in Paris, writing on works for solo violin by Unsuk Chin, Kaija Saariaho, and Helmut Lachenmann. She has also presented a lecture recital featuring an embodied analysis of Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne for solo violin at the Music and Movement Conference sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh.
Outside of classical music, Raina performs regularly as an improvising violinist with the high energy event band Sugarlane (led by GRAMMY-winning bandleader Chioma Eze), recently described by New York Magazine as “serotonin overload.” They have performed at venues such as the Smithsonian Museum, the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Plaza Hotel, and the Harvard Club of NYC. Raina has also worked as a session musician for pop and jazz musicians including GRAMMY-nominated artist Louis Cole.
Raina is a recent MM graduate of the Juilliard School, where she served as teaching assistant to Professor Lewis Kaplan. She also holds BM degrees with High Distinction from the Eastman School of Music in both Violin Performance and Music Theory, where she studied under Renee Jolles. Her additional mentors include Leila Josefowicz, Brad Lubman, Steven Laitz, Matthew Curlee, and Charles Castleman. Raina is based in New York City.