Allegra Lilly, harp, a student at The Juilliard School, is a student of Nancy Allen, principal harpist of the New York Philharmonic. Prior to her arrival in New York, she spent eleven years studying harp with Ruth Myers in metropolitan Detroit. She made her solo debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at the age of twelve, playing Debussy’s Danses sacrée et profane. The same year, she also performed the Danses with the Southfield Symphony. She has since appeared as a soloist with the Plymouth Symphony, the Warren Symphony, and the Lake St. Clair Symphony playing Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp. She made her solo recital debut at age sixteen, in Detroit, Michigan. She was the featured soloist with the International Symphony Orchestra during her junior year of high school, giving performances of the Ravel Introduction et Allegro in both Canada and the United States. During her freshman year at The Juilliard School, she was chosen to perform the Debussy Danses with the Juilliard Symphony for five performances in the Spring Dance Performance Series. Most recently, she traveled to Italy with the Juilliard Orchestra for the Festival dei Due Mundi 2004.Ms. Lilly was the winner of the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra Concerto Competition in 1997, and the 1996 Kalamazoo Bach Festival Young Artists’ Competition (performing the Handel Harp Concerto). From age twelve through fifteen, she was the annual recipient of the Millennium Prodigy Award from the James Tatum Foundation for the Arts, Inc. At age seventeen, she won second place in the national finals of the American String Teachers Association competition. As a high school senior, she received the Robert and Elizabeth Traub Scholarship for music study in Europe.
Allegra has been coached by master teachers Lucile Lawrence and Alice Chalifoux, by Ann Hobson Pilot, principal harpist of the Boston Symphony, Patricia Masri-Fletcher, principal harpist of the Detroit Symphony, Judy Loman, former principal harpist of the Toronto Symphony, and Xavier de Maistre, principal harpist of the Vienna Philharmonic. She was a member of the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra while in middle school, and later became principal harpist of the Metropolitan Youth Symphony. Since the age of twelve, Allegra has accompanied numerous choral ensembles in the Detroit area, most notably the Boychoir of Ann Arbor, with whom she recorded John Rutter’s Dancing Day in early 2001. She was delighted to have the opportunity to perform the Britten Ceremony of Carols with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus this past December.
Musica Bella concerts: October 24, 2004; January 30, 2005; October 22, 2006; April 15, 2007
This bio last updated October 20, 2004