Elise Blake performs regularly with the Washington National Opera Orchestra and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and appears in solo and chamber concerts at the Kennedy Center, Washington National Cathedral, Peabody Conservatory, and other Washington, DC area performance venues.
She has also been a long-time substitute with the Delaware, Virginia, and Richmond symphonies, and has held violin positions with the Knoxville Symphony, Sarasota Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Wintergreen Performing Arts Festival, and the Iris Collective, among others. Blake is committed to new orchestral music performance and, for almost a decade, was a member of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz. She also just recorded Sean Shepherd’s Concerto for Ensemble with the Grossman Ensemble in Chicago.
A former faculty member at Mary Baldwin University, Blake founded the piano trio Femina Camera with Sheng-Yuan Kuan (Piano, Lynn University) and Abigail Pack (Horn, University of North Carolina at Greensboro). The ensemble focused on unique violin-horn-piano trio repertoire while championing women and gender-marginalized composers. Previously, Blake studied and performed chamber music with members of the Jupiter, Cassatt, Audubon, Amernet, Muir, Juilliard, and Brentano string quartets.
Born and raised in Seacoast New Hampshire, Blake began her music journey on both piano and violin at the age of three. She has a BM from Boston University and an MM from the Peabody Conservatory. She currently resides in Rockville, MD with her husband David Murray, trombonist in the National Symphony Orchestra, their newborn daughter, and sister cats Cinnamon and Nutmeg.
