Michael Heald

Michael Heald is Sandy Beaver Teaching Professor and Professor of Violin at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, University of Georgia. He holds degrees from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and Michigan State University. His primary teachers were Emanuel Hurwitz, Richard Deakin, and Walter Verdehr, and he performed in master classes with Yehudi Menuhin, Ruggiero Ricci, Ida Haendel, Joseph Silverstein, the Amadeus, Vermeer, Griller, and Alban Berg Quartets amongst others. 

Michael has performed and taught in the United States and Europe. He was a member of the English String Orchestra and the American Sinfonietta, as well as concertmaster of the Lansing and Jackson Symphony Orchestras in Michigan. He also performed and recorded under such eminent artists as Simon Rattle, Pierre Boulez, Valery Gergiev, Walter Weller, Yuri Temirkanov, Norman del Mar, and David Willcocks. He currently performs with the Bellingham Festival of Music and Hamptons Festival of Music. 

As well as co-directing Chamber Music Athens, Michael has always had a deep love for chamber music in particular, collaborating with such artists at Peter Frankl, Ralph Votapek, Ian Fountain, Arvids Klisens, Ivo-Jan van der Werff, Joseph Lin, and Jon Manasse, as well as the Jupiter and Parker Quartets. He was a member of the Arlington String Quartet and the Beaumont Piano Trio, and as a member of Quadrivium that was in residence at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for a season of innovative concerts connected to the various exhibitions. 

Solo engagements include performances at the Bellingham, Methow, and Wintergreen summer festivals as well performances on BBC radio and NPR, and he holds the honour of having performed The Lark Ascending for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. He has performed in venues like the Wagner Hall, Riga, and St. George’s Brandon Hill, UK.  Concertos performed include those by Elgar, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Bruch, Wieniawski No.2, Brahms’ Double and Beethoven’s Triple.  He also performed Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No.3 with the English String Orchestra. 

Michael has recorded an album of sonatas by Elgar and Beethoven with Liana Embovica, piano, as well as a collaborative album of commissioned solo and chamber works by his longtime UGA colleague Leonard V. Ball, performing alongside Maggie Snyder and Timothy Lovelace. 

Michael has given public master classes at such places as the Royal College of Music in London, Michigan State University, and the University of Minnesota, and has also presented at the ASTA National Conference. He was on the faculty of the Montecito Music Festival in California, and the Wintergreen Festival in Virginia. His article What is the Point of Balance? was published nationally in the ASTA Journal.  In 2010 he was awarded a significant grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to present a chamber music festival of American music at the University of Georgia. 

https://arabesquerecords.com/z6863-elgar-beethoven-sonatas-for-violin-and-piano/ 

https://classical.music.apple.com/us/album/1489969332