Valentine Bon-bons
February 11, 2012

Michèle Lekas, violin

Michèle has enjoyed an active musical life since moving to the Chicago area in 1993. She serves as Concertmaster for the Rockford Symphony Orchestra, the Northwest Indiana Symphony, and New Philharmonic Orchestra, and is a substitute violinist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Lekas regularly performs chamber music with the Pilgrim Chamber Players, and the Lekas Trio. She has performed many times on WFMT’s Live from Studio One series, and is also an active studio musician. In addition to her classical repertoire, Ms. Lekas performs for Broadway in Chicago productions, highlighted by a four-year run of the musical Wicked.

As a featured soloist, Ms. Lekas has appeared with the Violons du Roy, the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, the New American Chamber Orchestra, the Northwest Indiana Symphony, the Southwest Michigan Orchestra, the Polish American Orchestra, and the New Philharmonic Orchestra, and appeared several times as a recitalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

She is a former member of the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, the chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy (Quebec), the Camerata Lysy Gstaad (Switzerland), and the Grammy-nominated Nashville Chamber Orchestra. She was also Associate Concertmaster of the New American Chamber Orchestra, an American ensemble based in Granada, Spain, that toured extensively throughout Europe.

She obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec, where she studied with Claude Létourneau, and received the “Henryk Szerying Award”. She was honored with the Graduate Performance Diploma from the St. Louis Conservatory, while studying with Jaime Laredo. She was also a full scholarship student at the International Menuhin Music Academy, in Switzerland. Other teachers include David Cerone, Sally Thomas, and Alberto Lysy. She also performed in master classes for Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Henryk Szeryng, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, and Joseph Silverstein.

Ms. Lekas resides in Willowbrook with her husband Mark, cellist, and their children, Sophie and James.