Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Welcomes New Musician Members

New York’s iconic conductorless orchestra welcomes violinist Njioma Grevious and violist Caeli Smith

• Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has announced that it has appointed two new member musicians in violinist Njioma Grevious and (associate member) violist Caeli Smith
  

• Both musicians have been playing with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as substitute musicians, and have been elected by the musicians and Artistic Directors to join the orchestra in a permanent capacity, effective immediately.

• Executive Director Alexander Scheirle states, “Both of these musicians have been playing with Orpheus for some years, and we all have had the joy to see, hear, and interact with them. It is truly a wonderful moment to welcome Njioma Grevious and Caeli Smith to our orchestra.”

Described as “superb” by the Chicago Classical Review, violinist Njioma Chinyere Grevious is a passionate and versatile solo, chamber and orchestral musician and performer. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School and a winner of its John Erskine Prize for scholastic and artistic achievement. In 2024, she was named a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant. In 2023, Njioma won the Robert F. Smith First Prize and the Audience Choice awards in the Senior Division of the Sphinx Competition as well as the Grand Prize of the Concert Artist Guild (CAG) and the Young Classical Artist Trust (YCAT) CAG Elmaleh Competition. She is a founding member of the award-winning Abeo Quartet, which was formed at Juilliard in 2018 and served as the inaugural Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Delaware. She has been invited to perform in numerous festivals and on stages in New York, Seattle, Detroit, Washington, DC, Chicago and Boston, and more as a soloist and chamber musician. Along with performing, Njioma loves teaching composition and collaboration to NYC and middle school and high school students from students who struggle financially through the Opportunity Music Project.

Caeli Smith, called “intense, precise, and full of personality”, is a chamber musician, educator, and facilitator in high demand across New York City and beyond. She has performed across the United States, Europe, and Asia with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, The Knights, Sejong Soloists, the Verbier Chamber Orchestra, and as the violist of Sybarite5.

Known among students and colleagues for her exuberance and curiosity, Caeli (pronounced “Chay-lee”) is on the faculty of the Heifetz International Music Institute and Kinhaven Music School. She works weekly with pre-college, college, and graduate students at The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music as a teaching assistant/adjunct professor for several viola studios.

Caeli is the former interim viola professor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She is an alum of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, the post-graduate performance, education, and leadership program of Carnegie Hall and The Juilliard School. She has led educational workshops for the fellows of Ensemble Connect and the teachers of Musical Mentors Collaborative.

Caeli holds two degrees from The Juilliard School: a bachelor’s degree in violin performance and a master’s degree in viola performance. Upon graduating, she received the William Schuman Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music. In 2022, Caeli graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a Masters in Education, Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship; with a concentration in Arts and Learning.

As a teenager, Caeli was a reporter and regular cast member on NPR’s “From The Top.” Caeli has written for radio, TV, and print, and her articles have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as Strings, Teen Strings, and Symphony magazines

About Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a radical experiment in musical democracy, proving for fifty years what happens when exceptional artists gather with total trust in each other and faith in the creative process. Orpheus began in 1972 when cellist Julian Fifer assembled a group of New York freelancers in their early twenties to play orchestral repertoire as if it were chamber music. In that age of co-ops and communes, the idealistic Orpheans snubbed the “corporate” path of symphony orchestras and learned how to play, plan and promote concerts as a true collective, with leadership roles rotating from the very first performance.

It’s one thing for the four players of a string quartet to lean into the group sound and react spontaneously, but with 20 or 30 musicians together, the complexities and payoffs get magnified exponentially. Within its first decade, Orpheus made Carnegie Hall its home and became a global sensation through its tours of Europe and Asia. Its catalog of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch and other labels grew to include more that 70 albums that still stand as benchmarks of the chamber orchestra repertoire, including Haydn symphonies, Mozart concertos, and twentieth-century gems by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ravel, and Bartók.

The sound of Orpheus is defined by its relationships, and guest artists have always been crucial partners in the process. Orpheus brings the best out of its collaborators, and those bonds deepen over time, as heard in the long arc of music-making with soloists such as Richard Goode and Branford Marsalis, and in the commitment to welcoming next-generation artists including Nobuyuki Tsujii and Tine Thing Helseth. Breaking down the barriers of classical repertoire, partnerships with Brad Mehldau, Wayne Shorter, Ravi Shankar, and many others from the sphere of jazz and beyond have redefined what a chamber orchestra can do. Relationships with composers and dozens of commissions have been another crucial way that Orpheus stretches itself, including a role for Jessie Montgomery as the orchestra’s first ever Artistic Partner. Having proven the power of direct communication and open-mindedness within the ensemble, the only relationship Orpheus has never had any use for is one with a conductor.

At home in New York and in the many concert halls it visits in the U.S. and beyond, Orpheus begins its next fifty years with a renewed commitment to enriching and reflecting the surrounding community. It will continue its groundbreaking work with those living with Alzheimer’s Disease through Orpheus Reflections,and the Orpheus Academy as well as the Orpheus Leadership Institute spread the positive lessons of trust and democracy to young musicians and those in positions of power. Each year, Access Orpheus reaches nearly 2000 public school students in all five boroughs of New York City, bringing music into their communities and welcoming them to Carnegie Hall. Always evolving as artists and leaders, the Orpheus musicians carry this communal legacy forward, counting on their shared artistry and mutual respect to make music and effect change.

Hannah Goldshlack-Wolf
hannah@wildkatpr.com
+1 917 330 2046