Sarah Cranor, DM

Biography

Violinist Sarah Cranor is passionate about the vibrant sonic possibilities found in sharing both historical and contemporary music with live audiences.  Sarah’s ongoing collaborations include Chaski Quartet, whose summer tours focus on bringing diverse string quartet music to incarcerated individuals in multiple Colorado Department of Corrections facilities, as well as public concerts across Colorado and New Mexico.  Sarah can be regularly heard in performances with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Sphere Ensemble, Omaha Symphony, and the Phoenix Symphony.  Sarah served as acting Concertmaster / Principal Second Violin with the West Texas Symphony for four seasons, was a member of the Permian Basin String Quartet, and guest concertmaster of the Bloomington and Lafayette Symphony Orchestras and the Bach Series at Duke University.  She has led historically-informed projects with the West Texas Symphony and the Omaha Chamber Music Society.  

Sarah directs Tonos: a historically-informed ensemble which explores the intersection of European music with the colonization of the Americas, whose aim is to bring music of lesser-known, anonymous, and indigenous composers, and music in indigenous languages to today’s audiences.   

A passionate educator, Sarah is the director of the Bloomington Early Music Immersion (BEMI), a unique, immersive middle-school-aged historical performance experience offered to modern string players without tuition cost, through the Bloomington Early Music Festival.  Through the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Sarah directed 2025’s Growing up Baroque, in collaboration with renowned children’s author Mariana Llanos, presenting “Run Little Chaski” as a bi-lingual musical presentation across Indiana.  Sarah received a 2025 Early Music America mini-grant to bring historical performance workshops into 7 middle school orchestras across Indiana. Sarah was a guest artist in residence at the Academía de Música Antigua de Medellín in Colombia, and she has presented guest lectures at EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Indiana University, and the University of Nebraska at Omaha.  She is Orchestra Director and instructor of Violin and Viola at Glendale Community College in Arizona.  

Sarah’s recordings include “The Colorful Telemann” with Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra for NAXOS Music, “Fair and Princely Branches: Music for the Jacobean Princes” with Renaissance violin band The Queen’s Rebels, “Stay at Home for the Holidays” with Sphere Ensemble, and the world premiere of Kurt Vonnegut’s Requiem with Voces Novae, found on all major streaming platforms.

Sarah holds a Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music; her doctoral research focuses on the music of Santiago Billoni, chapelmaster at the Durango Cathedral, Mexico, from 1749-1756.  While at IU, she studied with Stanley Ritchie, Grigory Kalinovsky, and Mimi Zweig.  She holds two Master of Music degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she studied with violinists Charles Wetherbee, Lina Bahn, and harpsichord and historical performance specialist Elizabeth Farr.  She performs regularly with her husband, conductor and violinist Alejandro Gómez Guillén both in string quartets and as Duo Anthracite.

Sarah is an avid ultra-marathon runner and always looks forward to seeing where her running shoes will take her!

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