Karissa Zadinsky

Our featured customer this month is fifteen year old cellist, Karissa Zadinsky. Karissa lives in Issaquah, and is an honors student at the Pacific Cascade Freshman Campus. She is the 2010 Performing Arts Festival of the Eastside Concerto Competition winner, and recently was a featured guest with Gerard Schwarz on King 5’s “New Day Northwest” morning television show.  She has served as principal cellist of the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra and has collaborated as a chamber musician with Mark O’Connor as part of the 2008 Seattle Symphony Summerfest. She studies with Dr. Leslie Hirt Marckx and Meeka Quan DiLorenzo, as well as participates in master classes and music festivals in the area.

Karissa is from a very musical family. Arthur, her father, is a first violinist with the Seattle Symphony, her mother Debra is a violin and viola private studio teacher, coach, and performer. Her older brother Derek is a double bassist studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. 

When it was time for Karissa to move to a larger instrument than her 3/4 size cello, Rafael Carrabba went well out of his way to help us find her current ideal 7/8 size cello, which she will be performing on with the symphony. He quickly made perfect tonal adjustments and changes suggested by her teachers and was very patient with us as we made this important purchase decision. Mr. Carrabba has always provided excellent service to serious Zadinsky studio students over the past 20 years and has always paid impeccable attention to detail. We are very fortunate to have such a fantastic luthier and his dedicated, highly talented team here in Seattle.

Karissa Zadinsky will be performing throughout May in Seattle, if you would like more details, please return to our front page.