Reynolds Auditorium

Reynolds Auditorium

Presents

Kelly Hall-Tompkins

&

Winston-Salem Symphony

Saturday, September 20, 2025 @ 7:30 PM

There’s so much more to the William Tell Overture than just the familiar “Lone Ranger” theme. A beautiful cello section solo and a threatening storm scene lead to the fanfare tune we all know and love from TV. Wynton Marsalis’s recent violin concerto blends soulful and intense virtuosity with jazzy New Orleans romp, and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth will take you on a journey from resigning to fate to the tender melody of a solo French horn, a lively waltz, and ultimate triumph.

Kelly Hall-Tompkins

Winner of a Naumburg International Violin Competition Honorarium Prize and featured in the Smithsonian Museum for African-American History, Ms. Hall-Tompkins is a violin soloist entrepreneur who has been acclaimed by The New York Times as “the versatile violinist who makes the music come alive,” for her “tonal mastery” (BBC Music Magazine) and as The New York Times “New Yorker of the Year.”

She has appeared as co-soloist in Carnegie Hall with Glenn Dicterow and conductor Leonard Slatkin, in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall, at Lincoln Center and with the Symphonies of Dallas, Jacksonville, Oakland, recitals in Paris, New York, Toronto, Washington, Chicago, and festivals of Tanglewood, Ravinia, Santa Fe, France, Germany and Italy. She was “Fiddler”/Violin Soloist of the Grammy/Tony-nominated Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof.  Inspired by her experience, she commissioned and developed the first ever Fiddler solo disc of all new arrangements, “The Fiddler Expanding Tradition,” which is featured in the new documentary “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles” on the 55-year history of the musical. 

As founder of Music Kitchen–Food for the Soul, Kelly Hall-Tompkins is a pioneer of social justice in classical music, bringing top artists in over 100 concerts coast to coast in homeless shelters from New York to Los Angeles and in internationally in Paris, France.  Music Kitchen made its Carnegie Hall debut to present the Forgotten Voices song cycle on May 21, 2020 in Association with Carnegie Hall.

Pre-Concert Talk