Biography

Violist Maggie Snyder has performed throughout the United States as principal violist, recitalist, solo concerto player, and under well-known conductors. She has performed at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Seoul Arts Center, and has toured internationally and nationally with many of her chamber ensembles. Her Carnegie Hall debut recital with sister Alexandra Snyder Dunbar (Allemagnetti) in Weill Recital Hall, May 2009, was hailed as a “highly promising debut,” in “a recital that showed them [Allemagnetti] to be a winning pair,” by New York Concert Review. In the past three years she has given hundreds of performances in New York City, Rochester, NY, Alabama, Mississippi, Hawaii, Washington, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Maryland, Minnesota, and in St. Petersburg, Russia. Highlights from this current season include performances of Bartok’s viola concerto with the Germantown Symphony Orchestra and West Virginia University Orchestra, recording for Naxos with the Chamber Orchestra of New York, and recitals and performances in North Carolina, Michigan, New York, Tennessee, and West Virginia. 

As an orchestral musician, Ms. Snyder has performed under James Levine, Yuri Temirkanov, David Zinman, Robert Spano, Leonard Slatkin, James dePriest, Julius Rudel, James Conlon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Keith Lockhart, and Alan Gilbert, and at music festivals such as the Brevard, Sewanee, and Aspen Music Festivals, where she was awarded the Time Warner Fellowship. She served as Principal Viola of the Tuscaloosa and Meridian Symphony Orchestras and is currently principal viola of the Chamber Orchestra of New York.

An active advocate of new music, especially that of young American composers, Ms. Snyder gave the world premiere of three pieces that she commissioned for her duo’s debut recital at Carnegie Hall. In May of 2007, she performed a recital of Russian Premieres of New American Music in St. Petersburg's House of Composers.  As a member of the West Virginia Piano Quartet, she has given world premiers and West Virginia Premieres of many works. 

In 2007, Ms. Snyder was appointed as the viola faculty at West Virginia University.  Prior to this, she taught at the University of Alabama, where she was the Head of Strings and Coordinator of String Chamber Music.  She has also served on the faculty of Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. She has given master classes, clinics, and performances at universities and top music schools throughout the country, including Interlochen Arts Academy, Eastman and the University of Rochester, The University of Georgia, Hartt, The University of Kentucky, The University of Tennessee, Georgia State University, and the University of South Carolina. Ms. Snyder has served on the faculty of the Lutheran Summer Music Festival and is currently an Artist-Faculty member of the Brevard Music Festival.  Ms. Snyder is the violist with the West Virginia Piano Quartet, based in Morgantown, and joins her sister in the viola/harpsichord duo, Allemagnetti.  She earned a Master of Music and Graduate Performance Diploma from The Peabody Conservatory of Music, where she was the Teaching Assistant to Victoria Chiang and received awards for outstanding string playing. Her Bachelor of Music degree is from the University of Memphis, where she was a National Pressar Scholar. In 2001, Ms. Snyder was a semi-finalist at the Primrose Memorial Scholarship Competition in Chicago. Her principal teachers have been Victoria Chiang, Heidi Castleman, and Lenny Schranze. She has participated in masterclasses with and studied with James Dunham, Jeffery Irvine, Roberto Diaz, Joseph de Pasquale, Laurence Dutton, and Richard Field, and has coached chamber music with members of the Juilliard, Cleveland, and Tokyo String Quartets and with collaborative pianists Benjamin Pasternak and Robert Macdonald. She has won grants from Peabody Conservatory, West Virginia University, and from the University of Alabama.

Ms. Snyder has an active commitment to community service, having held offices in the Alabama State Chapters of MENC and ASTA. She is a Past President of the Alabama Orchestra Association, where she served on the board of the Alabama Music Educator's Association, the state chapter of Music Educator's National Conference, and where she coordinated the Alabama All State Orchestra Festival and the string division of the Alabama Music Educators Association Conferences.