Christine Wilkinson Beckman

Baroque violin

Christine Wilkinson Beckman is a baroque violin specialist based in Olympia, WA.  She enjoys performing throughout her native Northwest with early music ensembles large and small, and she appears regularly with such groups as the Seattle, Portland, and Pacific Baroque Orchestras, Pacific MusicWorks, Bach Collegium San Diego, and the Oregon Bach Festival.  From 2015 to 2017 she directed the New Baroque Orchestra, one of the Community Collegia of the Early Music Guild of Seattle, and since 2020 she has served as principal second violin of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra.

Christine began her studies on baroque violin with Ingrid Matthews, and she graduated in 2013 with an MA from the Historical Performance Practices program at Case Western Reserve University where she studied with Julie Andrijeski.  She has also participated in masterclasses with Marc Destrubé, Monica Huggett, and Cynthia Roberts.  Christine’s modern performance studies began with Barbara Riley, and she received a BM in Violin Performance from St. Olaf College where she studied with Charles Gray. She has also studied with Walter Schwede and Grant Donnellan.

In addition to performing, Christine maintains a busy Suzuki violin and viola studio in Olympia where she enjoys fostering compassionate hearts and a love of music and diligent work in her young students.  Her Suzuki teacher training has been with Elizabeth Stuen-Walker, Dr. Susan Baer, Cathryn Lee, and Fernando Piñero.

When not busy performing or teaching, Christine enjoys baking, reading about linguistics and the natural sciences, drinking tea with lots of milk and sugar, knitting, and listening to the rain with her husband and young children.