NCE Musicians
Present and Past
Runa Matsushita (violin)
2018 NCE Oustanding Young Artist Achievement Award First Prize Winner, Runa Matsushita was born in Japan in 2005 and moved to the United States with her family when she was two years of age. She started playing violin at age three with her violin teacher Mrs. Irina Briskin and ever since she has been always enthusiastic about music and performance. She has been a member of Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestra for 5 years. She won the first place at the BSYO concerto competition and played as soloist in 2015 and in 2017 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall with the BSYO. She was also invited to perform Vivaldi “Winter” with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2016 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and in 2018 at the Oregon Ridge. Runa has won several awards at their age categories, such as the first prize at Romantic Music Competition (2016), the first prize at Vivo International Competition (2016-2018), the first prize at Grand Prize Virtuoso International Music Competition (2017), the first prize at International Grande Music Competition (2018). Runa is now a seventh grader at the Dumbarton Middle School and studies violin with Mr. Leonid Briskin.