Laena Grace

Group Classes

Laena offers group classes to school-age students in her teaching studio! These classes have recently expanded from monthly to every other week. We often play Suzuki repertoire together, but this holiday season, we recorded this multi-level version of Carol of the Bells:

Class activities include playing pieces together, playing games, performing current solo works for each other, short music theory lessons, listening, and more!

Laena is launching her own private teaching studio!

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Shostakovich String Quartet No. 3

I was very excited to have the opportunity to record the entirety of Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 3 in F major, Op. 73 with my colleagues at CU Boulder. The quartet is programmatic with interesting subtitles for each movement:

I. Allegretto (Blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm)
II. Moderato con moto (Rumblings of unrest and anticipation)
III. Allegro non troppo (Forces of war unleashed)
IV. Adagio (In memory of the dead)
V. Moderato (The eternal question: why? and for what?)

Last Master's Recital at CU Boulder

Laena presented her last Master of Music recital on April 18th at 2pm! She performed a classic violin work - Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 7 - as well as two fantastic pieces by Black composers that should be classics - Montgomery's Rhapsody No. 1 and Coleridge-Taylor's Violin Sonata.

Quarantine Cycle for Violin and Electronics
by Laena Grace

I wrote this piece for the final of my Music Technology class this semester. Each movement is based on an emotion I felt during the pandemic: Fear, Rage, Relaxation, and Apathy.

Florence Price

String Quartet in G major

My quartet at CU Boulder presented our first performance of Florence Price's String Quartet in G major. We were especially excited to perform and record this piece by a black female composer because it was lost for many decades and has very few recordings.

First Master's Recital at CU Boulder

Laena livestreamed her first master's recital at the University of Colorado Boulder - a long awaited event after canceling her original program due to the pandemic. She performed with fantastic collaborators Suyeon Kim and Keith Teepen.

Lera Auerbach
Selections from 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano

Karol Szymanowski
Mythes

Sergei Prokofiev
Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major

Tuxedo by Clarence Cameron White

Tuxedo is No. 18 out of Rachel Barton Pine's beginner violin method book Music by Black Composers Volume 1 and was originally written for violin and piano. I recorded it to highlight one of many underrepresented black composers. #blacklivesmatter

Born in Tennessee, Clarence Cameron White was a child prodigy in violin and composition. He was one of the foremost violinists of his day but struggled to perform since black soloists were not allowed to play with white orchestras. He was successful nonetheless, performing with his pianist wife Beatrice Warrick White. He was best known for composing dramatic works.

Quarantine Concerto
Sibelius 3rd movement

A glimpse into quarantine life as a graduate violinist: recording a concerto at home without piano accompaniment to approximate live performance and feel a sense of completion of a piece.

Dissolve, O My Heart
by Missy Mazzoli

I had planned to play this piece for my first Master's recital at CU Boulder in April along with Bach, Brahms, and Clara Schumann. Sadly, due to the pandemic, my recital was canceled. On the bright side, I did perform Mazzoli's beautiful piece for a performance class earlier in the year, and I'll be learning brand new repertoire for my recital that will be rescheduled to October. I hope this music can shine a small light in these difficult times.

Love, Laena

Senior Violin Recital at TCU

Laena presented her last recital at TCU. She performed a diverse program that featured her violin professor Dr. Adkins, Edward Newman, and Jeremy Averyt.

Missy Mazzoli
Vespers for Violin

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Duo in G for Violin and Viola

Claude Debussy
Sonata for Violin and Piano

Radiohead
No Surprises

Women of American Chamber Music

Laena's honors project recital featuring the Uproar String Quartet

Amy Beach Violin Sonata (featuring Edward Newman)
Jennifer Higdon An Exaltation of Larks
Missy Mazzoli Death Valley Junction

Laena's Junior Violin Recital at TCU

New videos from Laena's Junior Recital "French Sonatas"

Solos & Sonatas

I had a wonderful time collaborating with my fellow TCU students last semester to play Grieg! Thanks Dani, Ashley, and Manny!

Laena's Doomsday video was posted by BBC America and the official
Doctor Who facebook page! Check out the blog post here

"Or this startlingly accomplished version, by multi-instrumentalist Laena Grace" -Fraser McAlpine

Video of my quartet arrangement of an awesome song from a semi-obscure Russian pop star with an amazing voice. Fun times at Music in the Mountains.

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-Laena Grace