Alyssa Tong

Executive Director of String Insiders

Alyssa Tong studies violin under Simon James at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She formerly studied under Nelson Lee of the Jupiter String Quartet at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Music. Alyssa has participated in masterclasses for artists such as Rachel Barton Pine, Ani Kavafian, Laurie Smukler, Zach DePue, Daniel Hope, and Alexi Kenney. An avid chamber musician, she has performed in chamber masterclasses with Yo-Yo Ma, the Cavani, Parker, Catalyst, JACK and Telegraph Quartets, Mathieu Herzog, and pianist Michael Brown. Her other violin mentors include Paul Kantor, Charles Castleman, and Soovin Kim and she has spent recent summers at Bowdoin International Music Festival, ENCORE Chamber Music, LyricaFest and the Castleman Quartet Program. During the pandemic, Alyssa launched the first online summer music festival to great success, providing instruction for over 100 students with faculty from the country’s most prestigious music schools. Faculty members Ani Kavafian, Paul Katz, Paul Kantor, Soovin Kim, Ettore Causa, and more praised her work that filled the gap left by the canceled in-person festivals. The festival, the Online Solo Strings Intensive, continued and is on its fifth iteration. She also started an in-person offshoot, which has hosted the Verona and Rolston Quartets, and manages the Young Artist Institute at Chamber Music Northwest. She is passionate about increasing accessibility to classical music, which includes revitalizing the concert stage, providing quality music education to youth, and opening conversations around careers and holistic musicianship.