Canadian violinist and violist SARAH MCELRAVY has an impressive international career spanning Europe, North America, and Asia. Her divine sound, exquisitely sculpted (The Prague Post) and emotional depth and expressive intimacy (Kleine Zeitung) has firmly established herself as one of the most compelling soloists and chamber musicians of her generation.
Over the past decade, she has appeared as soloist with distinguished orchestras across Europe, Asia, and North America — including the Helsinki Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Hannover State Symphony, Grazer Philharmoniker, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, Guangzhou Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra, and the Bayerischer Rundfunk Chamber Orchestra among many others. Her degrees have led to major international collaborations, where she performs both major works and new commissions. Among her recent highlights is the world premiere of the Viola Concerto, Transcendental Love, written for her by Benjamin Yusupov, hailed as a powerful and distinctive addition to the viola repertoire.
In the 2025–26 season, McElravy makes debuts with the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano under Cornelius Meister, the Zagreb Soloists, the Macau Orchestra, and the Chamber Philharmonia Zhejiang in Hangzhou, where she performs a special arrangement of Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata under conductor Junping Qian. She also returns to the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra for a tour of Poland and Lithuania.
This season also sees the launch of two recording projects, featuring a new work by Israeli composer Uri Brener as well as a viola concerto by Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra and Sergey Smbatyan.
Equally at home in chamber music, McElravy makes festival debuts at Stavanger (Norway) and Brugg (Switzerland), performing Mozart’s Divertimento for String Trio with Emmanuel Tjeknavorian and Jeremias Fliedl. She returns to the Herbstgold Festival (the “Autumn Gold” Festival) at the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt (Austria) and the SoNoRo Festival in Budapest, and continues an international tour of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for String Trio alongside violinist Julian Rachlin and cellist Boris Andrianov, with performances at Wigmore Hall (London), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Teatro della Pergola (Florence), and Milan’s Conservatorio Verdi.
As a violinist, she was a founding member of the Linden String Quartet (2009–2015), touring widely across North America, holding residencies at Yale University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and winning top prizes at the Concert Artists Guild, Fischoff, and Coleman competitions. In 2014 she founded Chamber Music Society México, bringing world-class performances and mentorship to young musicians in Mexico City. As Аrtistic director, she invites prominent artists from North America to perform and lead educational programs for talented young Mexican musicians.
A true global citizen, McElravy has lived in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Austria while traveling nearly 300 days a year on five continents. Her dual identity as violinist and violist mirrors her artistic philosophy: rooted in tradition yet open to new challenges. Driven by an insatiable curiosity, she embraces her life as an explorer — of sound, of culture, and of human connection — drawing inspiration from the audiences, traditions, and encounters that continually shape her path.
She performs on a 1791 Ferdinando Gagliano violin and a 1785 Lorenzo Storioni viola, both generously on loan from the Dkfm. Angelika Prokopp Privatstiftung in Vienna.
