Sonja Bosca-Harasim, performer and educator, is concertmaster of the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra and recently concluded her tenure as associate professor of violin and viola at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, where she taught for more than a decade and served as head of the string area. Sonja maintains an active performing career locally, nationally, and internationally as a solo, chamber, and orchestral musician. Career highlights include performing as guest principal 2nd violin with the Detroit Symphony and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, CA, as well as chamber music performances at the “Grieg in Bergen” concert series in Norway, the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., La Jolla SummerFest in California, and at the Soiva Music Camp in Järvenpää, Finland. Prior to joining the faculty at Concordia, she performed regularly with the Houston Symphony, Houston Grand Opera, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra and Da Camera of Houston. Sonja has performed at numerous preeminent music festivals, including Cabrillo, Schleswig-Holstein, International Holland Music Sessions, Sarasota, Tanglewood, Aspen, Round Top, Brevard and Outside the Box, and has been invited to perform and teach throughout the United States and Canada at numerous universities and music festivals, including Concordia’s North Star Chamber Music Festival and Symposium, which she co-founded and served as director from 2017-2023. Her students have won prizes in numerous competitions and have participated in music festivals all over the world, going on to become successful music performers, educators, and attend distinguished graduate programs in music performance and other fields of study. Sonja is dedicated to the performance of new music, with several composers, including Karim Al-Zand, Daniel Breedon, Doug Harbin, Benjamin Krause, Richard Lavenda, Russell Peterson and Christopher Walczak, having composed pieces to her. She began her violin studies at the age of five and went on to attend Houston’s acclaimed High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Sonja completed her undergraduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music with David Updegraff and her Master of Music and Doctoral of Musical Arts degrees at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music with Kenneth Goldsmith and Cho-Liang Lin. She plays a violin she commissioned in 2011 by renowned Los Angeles based luthier, Mario Miralles, modeled after Mr. Lin’s “Titian” Stradivarius.