Malcolm Lowe joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra as concertmaster in 1984, becoming the tenth concertmaster in the orchestra’s history and only its third since 1920. As concertmaster, he also performs with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players. Mr. Lowe is equally at home as an orchestral player, chamber musician, solo recitalist, and teacher. He appears frequently as a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood and he has returned many times to his native Canada for guest appearances as a soloist with the Toronto and Montreal Symphony Orchestras and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa.
Mr. Lowe is a faculty member at the Tanglewood Music Center, New England Conservatory, and Boston University. Prior to his Boston appointment, he was concertmaster of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra. The recipient of many awards, he was one of the top laureate winners in the 1979 Montreal International Violin Competition. Born to musical parents – his father was a violinist and his mother a vocalist – on a farm in Hamiota, Manitoba, Mr. Lowe moved with his family to Regina, Saskatchewan at the age of nine. There he studied at the Regina Conservatory of Music with Howard Leyton-Brown, former concertmaster of the London Philharmonic. He later studied with Ivan Galamian at the Meadowmount School of Music and at the Curtis Institute of Music. Mr. Lowe also studied violin with Sally Thomas and Jaime Laredo and was greatly influenced by Josef Gingold, Felix Galimir, Alexander Schneider, and Jascha Brodsky.