Jennifer Carsillo’s versatility and wide-ranging musical interests have shaped a diverse career spanning the gamut of styles from Baroque to contemporary popular idioms. Critics called her performance of Bach's E-major violin concerto with the Shreveport Symphony "athletic and evocative" and “an impressive showcase for violinist Jennifer Carsillo,” noting, “its three movements came off as a unified, often rhapsodic whole, making Bach's mysterious gifts of counterpoint all the more magical."

Ms. Carsillo has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, Austria, Jamaica and Russia, and has performed recitals throughout the United States and in England, France and Italy. This season Ms. Carsillo will perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Centenary’s Hurley Orchestra and she will make her debut with Baroque Artists Shreveport as the violin soloist in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. As well as her recitals with her piano trio, (The Evangeline Trio, celebrating its 16th year) Jennifer Carsillo will join cellist Charles Lee for a recital featuring Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello at Colorado’s Arvada Center. 

An advocate for new music, Ms. Carsillo is a founding member of Rhythmic Salt, a string quartet and percussion group that debuted in October of 2003, introducing premieres by Iranian and Lebanese composers, works by Luciano Berio, Steve Reich and Peter Sculthorpe, and the concert premiere of a piece from a recent NBC movie score. Ms. Carsillo is also a founding member of the Ava (Audio-Visual-Arts) Ensemble, a chamber music group devoted to exploring the connections between music and other forms of art.

In 2002, Jennifer Carsillo was in residence as the violinist for the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, performing and recording seven world premieres written for the group, together with the standard works of living composers. She was also a featured artist at the Prince Albert Chamber Music Festival in Hawaii, and in 2003, traveled to France and Italy to perform a series of violin and harp duo recitals with Parisian harpist Isabelle Perrin for the Chateau de Montcaud and the Maestro Foundation Cremona. The success of these recitals led to a new collaborative project: a concerto for harp and violin by the French master composer, Jean-Michel Damase, written for the duo and debuted in October 2007. Ms. Carsillo has also performed with the Ritz Chamber Players and was featured with the band Metro Area at Miami Beach’s Winter Music Conference—the dance music industry’s signature annual event.
Ms. Carsillo spent three seasons at the Wintergreen Music Festival, where she performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and Concertmaster of the Festival Orchestra. Jennifer also enjoyed three summers as a Faculty Artist at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in New Hampshire, performing and coaching for Apple Hill's "Playing for Peace" project, a program designed to bring musicians from different countries together—in friendship, as well as in music.
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms. Carsillo was introduced to the violin through the public school system, and her passion for music led her to the Oberlin Conservatory as a student of Marilyn McDonald. After winning the Oberlin Concerto Competition, Ms. Carsillo continued her education as a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and under the tutelage of the legendary pedagogues Franco Gulli and Josef Gingold at Indiana University, earning her Master’s Degree in violin performance.
Jennifer Carsillo’s newest CD project is “Lullabies for Little Dreamers,” a jazz-inspired lullaby album that she recorded with her sister, San Francisco-based jazz vocalist Lori Carsillo.