College of Music

Violist Daphne Gerling currently enjoys a versatile and dynamic career as a teacher, chamber musician, recitalist, adjudicator and solo performer. She currently serves as Senior Artist Teacher of viola and chamber music, and Associate Director of the Summer String Institute at the University of North Texas College of Music, where she has taught since 2011. Her performances have taken her to leading venues in the United States, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Italy, Austria, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Honduras, Portugal, and Vietnam, and to music festivals including Aspen, Bowdoin, Encore, NYU, Sarasota, Bad Leonfelden, Norfolk (UK), Staunton (VA), Düsseldorf-Benrath, Internationale Händel Festspiele Karlsruhe, and Neuburg, Bavaria. Born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, she is a graduate of the Walnut Hill School and New England Conservatory, and holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Rice University, where she studied with Jeffrey Irvine, Lynne Ramsey, Karen Ritscher and James Dunham. She furthered her studies with Thomas Riebl, Simon Rowland-Jones and Heidi Castleman, among others.

Keenly involved with the American Viola Society, Dr. Gerling hosts the AVS's blog "From the Studio" with Dr. Susan Dubois and the UNT Viola Studio, for the 2015-16 academic year. She also collaborates with colleagues internationally, having hosted gatherings of violists in Porto Alegre and Brasília, Brazil in 2012 and 2013, and participating in the International Viola Society Congress in Cidade do Porto, Portugal in 2014 and Brazilian Viola Congress (I ENVIO) in João Pessoa, Brazil in 2015. In October 2016 she will be a featured performer at both the upcoming International Viola Congress in Cremona, Italy, and the II ENVIO in Florianópolis, Brazil.

From 2005-2007 Dr. Gerling was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Music in England, and violist of the Anglian Ensemble. Between 2008 and 2015 she has been a guest artist and clinician at James Madison University, Rice University, Illinois State University, Florida State University, University of South Carolina, Sewanee, University of Tennessee, Middle Tennessee State University, Texas Tech University, University of Virginia, University of New Mexico, University of Rhode Island, and the Federal Universities of Rio Grande do Sul, Brasília (UNB), Belo Horizonte (UFMG), Santa Catarina (UDESC), Rio de Janeiro (Uni-Rio) and Uberlândia, Brazil.

From 2008-2010 she served as Lecturer in Viola at Valdosta State University (GA), and from 2007-14 she served as faculty coordinator at the Festival de Cordas Nathan Schwartzman in Uberlândia Brazil, where she also made several concerto appearances. She has adjudicated for the 2015 New Mexico Symphony Guild Competition, and the 2013 Houston Symphony Orchestra league competition. In past summers taught on the faculty at the Rafael Trio Chamber Music Workshops in New Hampshire and the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts, with whom she has broadcast twice for National Public Radio. She spent the 2010-11 year studying baroque performance practice in Amsterdam and Cologne, performing as principal violist for the Karlsruhe International Händel Festspiele Opernwerkstatt at the Badische Stadtstheater. She performs with Dallas’ Chamber Music International  and Sounds Modern series and was a featured artist of Colorado Mesa University's Artist Recital Series. Dr. Gerling’s students currently hold teaching and orchestral positions throughout Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, England, South Africa, Korea, and Brazil, among others. Daphne is married to Coulter George, a professor of classics at the University of Virginia, with whom she enjoys learning languages and traveling around the world. She maintains a web presence at http://www.daphnegerling.com.