Moore, Thalia

Associate Principal Cello

Thalia Moore joined the San Francisco Opera Orchestra as Associate Principal Cello in 1982. A Washington D.C. native, she began her cello studies with Robert Hofmekler, and after only 5 years of study, appeared as a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. She attended the Juilliard School of Music as a scholarship student of Lynn Harrell, and received her Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in 1979 and 1980. While at Juilliard, she was the recipient of the Walter and Elsie Naumberg Scholarship and won First prize in the National Arts and Letters String Competition.

In addition to her position in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Ms. Moore joined the cello section of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra in 1989. She has appeared as a soloist at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Recital Hall, the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, the Herbst Theater in San Francisco and the San Francisco Legion of Honor, among others. She has also performed as a guest artist at the Olympic Music Festival in Seattle, the Grand Teton Music Festival and the Music in the Vineyards Chamber Music Festival. In 1991, Ms. Moore appeared in the last episode of the TV series, Midnight Caller, and in 1993, she was featured as a soloist with San Francisco Chamber Symphony under the direction of Roger Norrington. In 1996, she performed one of the first Bay Area performances of the composer's version of Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. In 1998, she was named a Cowles Visiting Artist at Grinnell College (Iowa) and in both, 1999 and 2001, won election to the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

As a member of the new music groups Earplay and the Empyrean Ensemble, she has recorded works by Mario Davidovsky, Maria Niederberger, Ross Bauer, Cindy Cox, William Kraft, Jorge Liderman, Kurt Rohde and David Rakowski. She has presented numerous premieres of works, including the 2005 world premiere of Laws of Motion, a concerto by Richard Festinger, written especially for her.