Andrea Vercoe

Biography

Andrea Vercoe is excited to join Towson University in Spring 2019 as Director of the World Music Ensemble.

As a violinist and violist, Ms. Vercoe has had exemplary classical training, with mentors such as Benjamin Zander, Robert Koff, and Greg Fulkerson, honing her skills in the Boston suburbs, at numerous summer music festivals, and at Oberlin Conservatory. She has been on stage in France, Canada, Russia, Austria, and Germany, as well as performing in the D.C. area for over 20 years in orchestras and chamber groups, in the pit for Ford’s Theater, Signature Theatre, and Olney Theatre, and at the Kennedy Center, the National Gallery of Art, embassies, and countless weddings. She has taught for the D.C. Youth Orchestra, the British School of Washington, and the Landon School. As a co-founder of the award-winning Great Noise Ensemble, she is also a strong advocate of new music. Ms. Vercoe can be found on the Elan, Great Noise Records, Folk Era Records, and Improv Arts labels, as well as in various film scores. 

This may sound like the typical, well-rounded career of a freelance classical musician. However, after years of living abroad, studying French, Russian, and Arabic, working for a refugee agency, and teaching English as a Foreign Language, as well as literally collecting CDs from different countries, Ms. Vercoe realized that the study of music around the world synthesized her interests in travel, languages, music, and multiculturalism. Years of calling herself an “unofficial ethnomusicologist” and performing Middle Eastern, tango, Persian, and flamenco music thus led to receiving a Master’s degree in Ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland at College Park in 2017. Inhabiting the space between classical and ethnic music, listening to a good taqsim, performing with the National Arab Orchestra, and exposing the Western ears of young people to different sonorities are what make her fulfilled.