Lara Hall has been a member of the New Zealand Chamber Soloists since 2006 with performances taking her to Australasia, Europe, Asia, and North and South America. As the only violinist residing in NZ to have obtained semi-final status in NZ’s most prestigious competition, the “Michael Hill International Violin Competition” she is one of the finest violinists in the country.
Lara began performing as a soloist around New Zealand at a young age including concerto performances with major New Zealand orchestras as a teenager. Her chamber groups won the New Zealand National Schools Chamber Music Competition when she was 15 and 16, by which stage she already had extensive experience performing as a chamber musician and soloist. Lara has gone on to become recognised nationally and internationally as a vibrant and virtuosic performer – in demand as soloist, orchestral concert-master, chamber musician and baroque specialist.
Lara was raised in Auckland and gained her BMus at the University of Auckland, while studying with Mary O’Brien. She then gained an Advanced Diploma in baroque violin which she studied with Graham McPhail, thus cementing a love and expertise in both musical genres.
Lara then studied extensively in the USA, starting in the Dorothy Delay studio at the Aspen Summer School. She then gained her Masters and Doctoral degrees at the University of Michigan studying with renowned pedagogue Paul Kantor.
During that time, she taught as a Graduate Student Instructor and was also a faculty member for the pre-University programme Young Strings. She played in numerous master classes, including one given by the eminent violinist Ruggiero Ricci from whom she received high praise.
A passionate teacher, Lara teaches violin and viola at the University of Waikato where her students currently range from undergraduate through to doctoral level. Her students have achieved success at a national level.
Lara displays an unusual degree of versatility. As well as her teaching career, she is the only musician to have performed in Chamber Music New Zealand’s main series concerts variously on violin, viola, and baroque violin.
In addition to recordings with the New Zealand Chamber Soloists which include the best-selling ‘Elegy’, Lara has released other CDs on the Atoll label in which she is the featured artist, and has recorded for the Naxos label as a chamber musician.
A CD in which Lara performs baroque violin concerti accompanied by the period instrument orchestra NZ Barok was the first CD of period instrument concerti to be recorded in New Zealand. While her work as chamber musician and baroque period instrumentalist are two very different aspects of her work, one of her CDs (Telemann’s Fantasias for solo violin) deliberately sets out to demonstrate stylistic influence that modern violin performance can take from the period instrument movement.Concertmaster of the Waikato and Bay of Plenty’s Opus Orchestra since 2006, Lara has led numerous other orchestras including the National Youth Orchestra, the Auckland Chamber Orchestra, and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.