Sandy Cameron

Violinist Sandy Cameron is mostly oriented toward crossover music. She makes her own arrangements of film scores and is the dedicatee of a concerto by film composer Danny Elfman. Cameron was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, into a military family. When she was eight, her mother gave her a violin, and the family noticed that she enjoyed practicing. Cameron moved often with her family during the first part of her childhood and lived for a time in Frankfurt, Germany, where she had a violin teacher named Bach. At 12, she performed with an orchestra in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, and she also made several appearances under conductor Valery Gergiev -- at the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, and with the Kirov Orchestra on a North American tour. Returning to the U.S., Cameron's family settled in Poolesville, Maryland. Cameron attended Harvard University under a dual degree program with the New England Conservatory of Music. Cameron has appeared at such prestigious venues as Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, New York, and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany. She has collaborated with major orchestras around the U.S. and abroad, including the Seattle Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra. With the latter, after appearing on several film soundtracks, she made her solo debut in 2019 on the Sony Classical label. The album featured Cameron's performance of the Violin Concerto "Eleven Eleven" of Elfman, formerly the lead singer of the rock band Oingo Boingo. She has made many appearances in crossover music, including with Cirque du Soleil and on tour with jazz trumpeter and composer Chris Botti. Cameron has written arrangements of her own for appearances at the Hollywood Bowl, adapting soundtrack music for such concerts as The Nightmare Before Christmas Live in Concert and The Little Mermaid Live in Concert. She has worked with composer Marco Beltrami, a longtime collaborator of horror director Wes Craven, on the project Bach by Beltrami. In 2023, Cameron once again recorded the Elfman concerto, this time with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor JoAnn Falletta, for the Naxos label.
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