Carmen Granger is an orchestral musician throughout the midwest and has been seen performing with many symphonies and opera companies in Ohio, Arkansas, Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina. She is currently a member of the Lima Symphony, and has sat as principal viola of Western Piedmont Symphony, Carolina Philharmonic, Fayetteville Symphony, and assistant principal of Greensboro Symphony and Durham Symphony. She is currently studying to obtain her M.M. in viola at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she has sat as principal of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and is currently principal of the Concert Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra.

Carmen graduated in 2017 with her Bachelor’s in Music Performance from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). During her time at UNCG, she was the principal viola of the Symphony Orchestra for two years and performed with different smaller ensembles within the school, including being the resident violinist/violist of the school’s contemporary music ensemble, Present~Continuous, the Gate City Camerata, Casella Sinfonietta and the UNCG Opera Orchestra. She has also had the pleasure of working with Lynn Harrell, Philip Glass, Molly Ringwald, and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. She has performed in masterclasses for Michael Strauss, Pamela Ryan, and Elias Goldstein as well as the Friction Quartet, Deadalus Quartet, and Decoda Quartet.

In recent years, Carmen has played at the Durham Center for Performing Arts as a guest with the MGP Live tour of The Legend of Zelda Symphony of the Goddesses (2017) as well as Distant Worlds Music from Final Fantasy (2018). She has also been an orchestral fellow at National Music Festival (2019) and Sewanee Summer Music Festival (2018). In her free time, Carmen enjoys playing disc golf, video games, baking, and entertaining her cat, Tina.