Josephine Fitzpatrick, viola, was born in Columbus, Ohio (USA) in 1962. She is the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Irish, Catalan, Polish and Ukranian emigrants to the US around the turn of the 20th century. She began piano lessons at age 8 and won first prize in a regional piano competition at age 16. She also began studying the violin, at age 12, and the viola, at age 15, in order to play with her local youth orchestra. She went on to study the viola with George Janzer and Abraham Skernick at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana (Bachelor of Music with distinction, 1985). She then studied with Karen Tuttle at the Manhattan School of Music (Master of Music, 1987). Her chamber music teachers included members of the Vegh Quartet, the American String Quartet and the Juilliard Quartet. She received a prestigious Aspen Music School Fellowship in 1986. She also won scholarships to the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School, the New York String Seminar and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Josephine Fitzpatrick holds the post of Assistant Principal Viola of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra since 1987. She has also played on occasion with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (Minnesota, USA) and the Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt, Germany). She has appeared as soloist several times with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Franz-Paul Decker, Robert King and Martin Haselbock. She is on the faculty of the Escuela Luthier in Barcelona since 2002.
