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Violinist Janet Orenstein has enjoyed an active performing career both in the United States and abroad as a chamber musician, soloist and advocate of contemporary music. She is a founding member of the Guild Trio, and ensemble that won both the "USIA Artistic Ambassador" and "Chamber Music Yellow Springs" competitions, and has performed and held master classes throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in Norway, Turkey, the former Yugoslavia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal, France and Australia. Her trio career has included residencies at the Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY, the Stony Brook Medical Center, and the University of Virginia, where she was a performing and teaching member of the faculty for five years.
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Ms. Orenstein won the USIA Artistic Ambassador Competition as second time in the duo category, and toured extensively in Africa giving recitals and master classes with pianist Christina Dahl. As a chamber musician she has appeared in New York's Alice Tully and Merkin Concert Halls, as well as at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and has recorded for the Centaur, Naxos, CRI, and Innova labels. Her recording of Jesse Montgomery’s Duo for Violin and Cello will be released next year on the newly formed UNCSA Media label.
She has performed at the Apple Hill Chamber Music Festival in Nelson, New Hampshire, the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont, and the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove in Cornwall, England. An advocate of contemporary music, she has premiered works by Sheila Silver, William Bolcom, and Harvey Sollberger, among many others, and performs from a vast repertoire of new music.
Now on the violin faculty of the UNCSA School of music, Ms. Orenstein and has taught violin and chamber music at various times at UNCG and Wake Forest University, and has appeared numerous times as a guest violinist in concerts with Dimitri Sitkovetsky as part of the Greensboro Symphony's Sitkovetsy & Friends chamber music series. Upon returning from a long solo tour at age 32, Janet contracted focal dystonia, which made it nearly impossible for her to coordinate left-hand finger patterns. After seventeen years, she gave her first solo recital in 2013, having worked continuously during those years to recover coordinated movement.
She now collaborates with colleagues Ida Bieler, Scott Rawls and husband Brooks Whitehouse as a founding member of the Reynolda Quartet, the ensemble in residence at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art. They recently performed a Covid-Era "Concert of Gratitude", featuring Beethoven op. 132 and Smetana’s Quartet "From My Life", livestreamed from Watson Hall at UNCSA. In addition, they performed Schubert’s C major String Quintet in collaboration with guest artist and North Carolina Symphony principal cellist Bonnie Thron. Recent residency programs at Reynolda Museum have also included works of Bartok, Brahms, Mozart and Mendelssohn, and the world premiere of Lawrence Dillon’s Last Spring.
She has performed at the Apple Hill Chamber Music Festival in Nelson, New Hampshire, the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont, and the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove in Cornwall, England. An advocate of contemporary music, she has premiered works by Sheila Silver, William Bolcom, and Harvey Sollberger, among many others, and performs from a vast repertoire of new music.
Now on the violin faculty of the UNCSA School of music, Ms. Orenstein and has taught violin and chamber music at various times at UNCG and Wake Forest University, and has appeared numerous times as a guest violinist in concerts with Dimitri Sitkovetsky as part of the Greensboro Symphony's Sitkovetsy & Friends chamber music series. Upon returning from a long solo tour at age 32, Janet contracted focal dystonia, which made it nearly impossible for her to coordinate left-hand finger patterns. After seventeen years, she gave her first solo recital in 2013, having worked continuously during those years to recover coordinated movement.
She now collaborates with colleagues Ida Bieler, Scott Rawls and husband Brooks Whitehouse as a founding member of the Reynolda Quartet, the ensemble in residence at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art. They recently performed a Covid-Era "Concert of Gratitude", featuring Beethoven op. 132 and Smetana’s Quartet "From My Life", livestreamed from Watson Hall at UNCSA. In addition, they performed Schubert’s C major String Quintet in collaboration with guest artist and North Carolina Symphony principal cellist Bonnie Thron. Recent residency programs at Reynolda Museum have also included works of Bartok, Brahms, Mozart and Mendelssohn, and the world premiere of Lawrence Dillon’s Last Spring.