ANNA WASHBURN, violin and viola faculty, grew up with folk roots in a vibrantly musical community in rural Maine, and began her career performing and teaching in Boston after studying with Peter Zazofsky at Boston University. In 2008, she was drawn to the wild grandeur of the Bay Area where she completed her masters at the San Francisco Conservatory as a student of Bettina Mussumeli. 

After hearing Philharmonia Baroque play Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in a masterclass at the Conservatory, she knew she wanted to perform so passionately on gut strings, and has pursued that goal ever since. Since 2015, Anna has performed and recorded with AGAVE, a (mostly) baroque chamber group devoted to works that have been excluded from the musical canon, and plays violin and viola on their most recent albums, In Her Hands, with Michele Kennedy, Peace in Our Time, and American Originals with Reginald Mobley, for which AGAVE received a GRAMMY® nomination in 2021. She also performs and records with Philharmonia Baroque, Bach Collegium San Diego, Cantata Collective, Oregon Bach Festival, Tesserae (Los Angeles), and Live Oak Baroque Orchestra (Sonoma), as well as with opera companies Ars Minerva (San Francisco) and Opera Neo (San Diego) and the Mark Morris and Martha Graham Dance companies. 

In recent years Anna has also been known to appear on stage with a variety of other ensembles, from recording and performing with Minna Choi’s pop-orchestra Magik*Magik Orchestra with artists like Sting, Chicago, John Vanderslice, Third Eye Blind, Hauschka, Christina Vantzou and Gregory Porter… to hip hop/opera group Ensemble Mik Nawooj…to regular performances with San Jose Chamber Orchestra and the Santa Rosa Symphony, and as a founding member of Sylvestris Quartet. She occasionally enjoys performing as a soloist with local orchestras, is devoted to her wonderful handful of students, and always looks forward to teaching at Music Adventure with her husband, faculty member Aaron Westman, and bringing along their young daughter.