Christy Graffeo

Viola

Christy Graffeo has held leadership positions in several professional orchestras in her thirty-plus year career as a violist. She has played in the first stand of the viola sections of the Oregon Symphony, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Oregon Bach Festival, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Eugene Opera, Oregon Festival of American Music, Portland Opera, Central City Opera, and Colorado Ballet, Oregon Mozart Players, Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, Boulder Philharmonic, the Ernst Bloch Festival, and the Denver Chamber Orchestra. Locally, she was a core member of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and has performed regularly with other regional orchestras. Christy has taught numerous private viola and violin students, and served as adjunct professor of viola at Maryville College for 7 years. She served as the personnel manager and librarian as well as principal violist for the Oak Ridge Symphony, Symphony of the Mountains in Kingsport, and Bryan Symphony in Cookeville, TN. She is the founding violist of the Inner Voices String Quartet and owner of A Touch of Classical, a small business providing wedding and event music across the region. Christy took on a new challenge at age 43 and went back to school to become a diagnostic medical sonographer. Currently, she works full time for Summit Medical Group as a Sonographer where she holds two registries in Abdomen and Vascular. She continues to be principal Viola for the Bryan Symphony and continues playing with the Symphony of the Mountains, Oak Ridge Symphony, and Chattanooga Symphony when available.
Christy holds a Bachelor of Music Performance degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and attended graduate school at Yale University and Canada’s Banff Centre for the Performing Arts. She and her husband, Frank, are raising their son Enzo in Knoxville, where they have resided since 2000.