Grace Byrd · viola

Grace Byrd loves chamber music, and is excited to once again be a part of the Chamber Music Festival of Saugatuck. She is currently the violist of the Kalamazoo Symphony’s Burdick-Thorne String Quartet, the Tira-Mi-Su Trio (with her husband and pianist Joseph Byrd, and violinist Julia Maley), and serves as Assistant Principal violist of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. She has played in chamber ensembles in Rochester, New York; Heidelberg, Germany; Medford, Oregon, and throughout Michigan. She earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees at the Eastman School of music where she studied with George Taylor and also studied at the Hochschule Hanns Eisler in Berlin, Germany with Kim Kashkashian. Grace enjoys running, swimming, and playing underwater hockey in her spare time.