Frank Almond

The recipient of international publicity after his violin was stolen, Frank Almond was the longtime concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony. He is a key figure in Milwaukee's musical life and has made several recordings. Almond was born in California on December 20, 1963, and grew up in San Diego. Both his parents were musical professionals; his father was a conductor at San Diego State University, and his mother was a piano teacher. Almond took up the violin at five, making slow progress at first but then suddenly advancing quickly. At 15, he became the concertmaster of the Tanglewood Institute summer training program orchestra, playing under such conductors as Leonard Bernstein and Colin Davis. At 17, Almond placed third at the International Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy; he was the youngest violinist ever to place so high. Almond attended the Juilliard School in New York, studying with Dorothy Delay. He was a prizewinner at the Eighth International Tchaikovsky Competition, where his efforts were chronicled in a U.S. Public Broadcasting System documentary. After freelancing in New York for several years, Almond landed orchestral positions. He served as the concertmaster or guest concertmaster with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Montreal Symphony, and Dallas Symphony Orchestra before landing the post of concertmaster with the Milwaukee Symphony in 1995. In 2004, Almond made his recording debut, appearing on the Albany album Music of Edward Joseph Collins, Vol. 5. In addition to performing with the Milwaukee Symphony, often as a soloist, Almond became an enthusiastic chamber music player. He was a member for a time of the New York chamber group An die Musik, and with pianist William Wolfram, he issued an album of violin sonatas by Respighi, Janáček, and Richard Strauss on the Avie label in 2006. Almond became an important part of Milwaukee's musical life, founding a chamber music series (still in existence as of the early 2020s) called Frankly Music and serving as artist-in-residence with the Milwaukee Youth Symphony. On January 27, 2014, Almond was tased by thieves in a parking lot at Wisconsin Lutheran College, where he had just played a concert, and his Stradivarius violin, whose first owner was Giuseppe Tartini, was stolen. After a massive police search, the instrument was recovered, slightly scratched but in good condition, and the participants in the crime were arrested, charged, and imprisoned. Almond appeared on The Moth Radio Hour in a program about the heist, and he has made three albums devoted to the instrument; A Violin's Life, Vol. 3, appeared in 2023. In 2020, after his wife's death from breast cancer, Almond stepped down as concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony but stayed on as artistic advisor.
© James Manheim /TiVo