CHRISTINE MARTIN

Christine Ragonetti Martin was born and raised in Plymouth, Mass. She received her Bachelors Degree in Music Performance and Strings in 1971 and her Masters in Viola Performance in 1972, both from the University of Michigan. From 1968-1970 she studied abroad at the Akademie fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst (Academy of Music and the Performing Arts) in Vienna, Austria with Hatto Beyerie, Principal Violist of the Weiner Solisten and also at the Academy. While at Michigan, Martin studied with Robert Courte and Francis Bundra. Courte was the former violist of the Pagannini String Quartet. She has also studied with Ralph Hersh, formerly of the Philadelphia and Dallas Symphonies, and Howard Boyajian of Boston University and Baldwin Wallace College. While in Vienna, Martin traveled extensively in Europe and became fluent in German. She visited such cities as Paris, Budapest, Rome, Lucerne, Salzburg, Bonn, Munich, Bratislava, London, Dublin, and Edinbourgh. She has perfomed with the Toledo, Ohio Symphony, the Flint Symphony and the Plymouth, Michigan Symphony. She was Assistant Principal Viola of the Congregation of the Arts Orchestra at Dartmouth College for two summers and Principal Viola of the Temple University Festival Orchestra in Philadelphia.

Martin has performed in some of the most famous concert halls in the world: Symphony Hall in Boston, the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria, the Schubert Konzerthalle in Vienna and with the North Carolina Symphony in Carnegie Hall in NYC, Orchestra Hall in Chicago and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. For several summers she was a member of the viola section of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she played under the baton of world-renowned conductors such as Ado DeWaart and Raymond Leppard. She has performed extensively in the Triangle with the North Carolina Chamber Players.

She is the mother of three daughters. Victoria, a graduate of ECU is currently on the Spanish faculty at Our Lady of Lourdes School in Raleigh. Rebecca, is a psychology major at ECU. Ashley, an accomplished violinist, won both the Durham and the Raleigh Symphony Concerto competitions, playing the first movement of the Lalo Symphonic Espagnole. She intends to make music her career and studies with Aaron Berovsky at the University of Michigan. Christine Martin has been with the North Carolina Symphony since 1972.