Lourdes Pinney

American Violist, Lourdes Pinney, lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where she is pursuing a Master’s Degree at the Yale School of Music studying under Ettore Causa. In 2025, she graduated with her Bachelor’s of Music at the Cleveland Institute of Music under the mentorship of Jeffrey Irvine and Lynne Ramsey.

Lourdes has been honored to share a stage with many of the world’s most respected musicians including Jamie Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Kathryn Brown, Stella Chen, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, Bella Hristova, Jan Lisieck, Mayumi Kanagawa, Gil Shaham, and Sterling Elliot. She has attended numerous festivals, including the Taos School of Music, Aspen Music Festival, the Pacific Music Festival, International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove, and the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar. During the summer of 2025, she will attend the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the St. Lawrence Chamber Music Festival with her quartet, Selene, which includes musicians Oliver Leitner, Jihyun Baik, and Colin Guan. 

Lola has received guidance from esteemed musicians such as Kim Kashkashian, Nobuko Imai, Stanley Konopka, Maria Lambros, Michael Kanen, James Dunham, Atar Arad, Steven Wyrczynski, Nina Lee, Robert McDonald, Daniel Foster, and Heinrick Koll. She was a tenured member of the Canton Symphony Orchestra after she joined as a section violist in 2023 and is a frequent substitute of The Cleveland Orchestra and New York Classical Players. In 2023, Lola participated in the New York String Orchestra Seminar and held the Associate Principal chair.

Lola has appeared on renowned stages including Carnegie Hall in New York, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Musikverein in Vienna, Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Smith Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. She made her debut as a soloist with the UNLV Symphony Orchestra at the age of 9 and has since soloed with the Nevada School of the Arts Chamber Orchestra, Henderson Symphony Orchestra, and was planning to solo with the Las Vegas Academy Orchestra and Las Vegas Philharmonic in 2020. Lourdes holds prizes in various competitions including the Darius Milhaud CIM Competition (2024), Ohio Viola Society Competition (2024, 2023), Carol Jackson Concerto Competition (2021), Henderson Symphony Orchestra Young Arts Competition (2021) Susan Barton Music Competition (2020), Nevada School of the Arts Concerto Competition (2020), Las Vegas Philharmonic Concerto Competition (2020), and MTNA (2019).

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During her time at CIM she was a recipient of the Ernest Bloch Artistic Distinction Award, the Ruth D. Sihler Memorial Scholarship, and the 2025 Robert Vernon Scholarship. Lola plays on a viola by Gabrielle Kundert