ABOUT ME

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Born and raised with the music of Chicago in her soul, violinist Margaret FioRito has been performing and teaching professionally for more than twenty years across the United States. 

Growing up in Oak Park, Illinois, Margaret had access to great classical music and wonderful violin teachers from an early age, (with many thanks to her parents!) including her very first teacher, Margaret’s namesake grandmother, on whose Carol Becker and Son violin she currently performs and has played upon for more than a quarter of a century. 

Winning principal violin chairs as a talented high school student in what became the Chicago Orchestral Academy, Margaret performed as both a concerto competition winner and as concertmaster soloist in the years leading up to university while in Maestro Joseph Glymph’s Classical Symphony Orchestra and Protégé Philharmonic. 

During the summer before senior year, Margaret served as Associate Concertmaster of the Kiev Radio Symphony, sharing a stand with Ukraine’s Anatoly Bazhenov, on an Eastern European orchestral tour. 

After winning a place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Margaret won the coveted Thomas J. Smith Scholarship Award, a full-tuition scholarship for the UIUC School of Music, where she studied with Romanian violin soloist and pedagogue, Sherban Lupu, earning her Bachelor’s degree in Violin Performance. 

A Master’s degree in Violin Pedagogy followed at Northeastern Illinois University under the close guidance and direction of the Assistant Concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, David Taylor. It was also during these two years that Margaret began her professional freelance orchestral career in the Chicagoland area. 

Once finished with graduate school, Margaret began her own successful violin studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico, while launching her freelance career further in many professional orchestras and ensembles in the south and western United States. From “jazzing” with legendary Tonight Show trumpeter Doc Severinsen in California, appearing as an orchestral soloist in Arizona performing Ralph Vaughn-Williams’ The Lark Ascending, rocking city-wide Greek festivals as a band fiddler across New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado, making her debut as a traveling mariachi violin soloist, while performing regularly as a section violin with both the Santa Fe Symphony and New Mexico Philharmonic, Margaret also held down two contract first violin positions in Oklahoma, with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra and the Tulsa Opera Company until moving back to the Chicago area in the mid-2010s. 

Freelance Chicagoland orchestral work began in 2013, where Margaret had the opportunity to perform in several very special rehearsals with Maestro Riccardo Muti directing the works of Strauss, Liszt, and Scriabin. Margaret also began presenting chamber music coaching sessions and master classes in school districts across the southwest suburbs. Accepted in 2014 as a private violin teacher in District 204 at Neuqua Valley High School of Naperville, Illinois, (a National GRAMMY Signature School), Margaret began her private teaching once again, and followed in 2016 with a subsequent violin studio in District 203 at Naperville North High School, while maintaining a private violin studio out of her home for exceptionally talented students. In addition to teaching, Margaret continues to judge numerous competitions yearly (ILMEA, Solo and Ensemble, concerto competitions, seating auditions) giving feedback and direction to young performers across the state of Illinois. 

These days, you can see Margaret regularly gracing concert stages as a first violinist with Maestro Mina Zikri and the Northbrook Symphony Orchestra and with Maestro George Stelluto and the Peoria Symphony Orchestra, in addition to her freelance and special events solo work happening at all points in-between. Check the “Events” section to see where Margaret will be playing next. Should you decide to make it out to one of the many concerts held during a typical season, Margaret hopes that you will stop by and say hello.