Geneva Lewis [photo credit: Pasadena Conservatory of Music]
When Geneva Lewis was 11, she walked out onto a Pasadena stage and played as a soloist with the Pasadena POPS. That was her professional debut.
On Monday, she comes back.
Lewis, a BBC New Generation Artist who has performed at the BBC Proms and earned the Avery Fisher Career Grant, will coach students at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music in a free, public violin master class beginning at 5 p.m. in Barrett Hall, 100 North Hill Ave. No tickets. No reservation required.
The event is one in a series of public master classes PCM presents throughout the school year. The format is part recital, part open lesson: students perform, Lewis coaches them in real time, and the audience watches. The instruction is for the students. The experience is open to anyone who walks in.
She is a BBC New Generation Artist (named 2022–24), the recipient of a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and the Grand Prize winner of the 2020 Concert Artists Guild Competition. Her 2025–26 season alone includes appearances with the Baltimore Symphony, the San Diego Symphony, Kremerata Baltica, the Utah Symphony, and the Santa Rosa Symphony, among others. In 2023, she made her debut at the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall. Critics have cited her for “remarkable mastery of her instrument,” according to the classical music publication CVNC, and Musical America has called her “clearly one to watch.”
Lewis is a PCM alumna. She studied at the Pasadena Conservatory’s Chamber Music program under Aimée Kreston — now PCM’s String and Chamber Music Department Chair — and returned to PCM in 2017 as an apprentice coach at the conservatory’s Chamber Music Intensive, according to a PCM blog post from that year. Before her conservatory studies, she trained with Kreston at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles. She went on to earn her Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory, studying with Miriam Fried, before pursuing advanced studies with Professor Mihaela Martin at Germany’s Kronberg Academy.
She currently performs on a composite violin made by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, dating to approximately 1776, on loan from a charitable trust.
For information: Pasadena Conservatory of Music, 100 North Hill Ave., Pasadena. Phone: 626-683-3355. Website: pasadenaconservatory.org.
The city where her career started is where, this Monday evening, she returns to pass something on.
STRING MASTER CLASS | GENEVA LEWIS Date & Time: Monday, April 27, 2026, 5:00 p.m. | Venue Address:Pasadena Conservatory of Music 100 N. Hill Ave. Pasadena , CA 91106 | Cost: Free | For more information call: 626-683-3355 | Or click here: https://pasadenaconservatory.org/event/string-master-class-geneva-lewis/