Eileen Bourgade

Violin

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Eileen started the violin at age 11 with the Suzuki method. Very motivated, she was accepted into the Virtuoso program at San Domenico School on scholarship. She was a soloist with the Marin Youth Orchestra, Orchestra Piccola, and with the late Andor Toth at San Domenico’s annual Vivaldi concert.

Eileen went on to Stanford for her BA where she majored in Music and French Studies. She earned her MM in violin performance from MSM and finished at the Julliard School, where she studied with Naoko Tanaka and Glen Dicterow. Eileen was lucky enough to play in the masterclasses of Nathan Milstein (Zurich), Henryk Szeryng (Geneva), Franco Gulli, Isaac Stern and Joseph Gingold. In New York, Eileen played with the Trio Celeste and was first violin in the American Symphony Orchestra as well as the Tanglewood Young Artist’s orchestra, the Aspen Festival Orchestra and the Schleswig Holstein Festival Orchestra where she played under the baton of Georges Solti, Valeri Gergiev and Simeon Byshkov.

After a long “musical hiatus” where Eileen worked as a financial analyst at Bear Stearns, Lazard Freres (Paris) and Colony Capital and after the birth of her third child Julien, Eileen began to perform again, including a dozen full recitals with the British pianist Leo Debono in Paris. After 11 years in Paris, Eileen and her family have recently moved to San Francisco.