Seminole Heights Native and Master Violist Returns to Tampa for Concert

From the music room of with a rented violin, to a slot in one of the world's most critically acclaimed string quartets, Geraldine Walther has come a long way from her native Seminole Heights. 

And Walther will return to Tampa Friday for a concert, performing as guest artist with the USF Orchestra at the University of South Florida's School of Music concert hall. 

The 7:30 p.m. program will feature "important concerti and piano quartets in the classical canon," accoriding to USF's website. 

As detailed in this USF Oracle story, Walther was born in Tampa in 1950, and started out on violin at age 7. Her family rented the instrument from Broward Elementary for $9 a year. At age 10, she switched to a viola her father bought at a pawn shop. By the early '60s, Walther was playing in the Tampa Philharmonic. She left Tampa for good in 1967 to study at the Manhattan School of Music.

Two years later she landed a gig as assistant principal violist for the Miami Philharmonic, and also served that role with the Pittsburgh and Baltimore symphonies. She later held the principal violist slot for the San Francisco Symphony for 29 years.

In 2005, Walther left that post to join the Takacs Quartet, an internationally-renowned ensemble formed in Budapest. Since leaving Hungary in 1983, Takacs Quartet has been the quartet-in-residence at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where Walther now teaches.

“I feel very lucky to be doing what I’m doing right now,” Walther told the Oracle. “With the (Takács) quartet, we travel everywhere. We go to France, England, Australia, New Zealand and all over the U.S.”