Violist Liam DeRosa, age 18, has performed nationally and internationally as a chamber and orchestral musician. He is currently finishing his senior year at Cranston High School East, where he has spent his high school career serving as Concertmaster of the Orchestra and on the Executive Board of the Tri-M Music Honor Society, among other several non-musical activities. Liam studies viola with Michelle LaCourse, Viola Professor and String Department Chair of the Boston University School of Music. In order to keep his violin chops, he also studies violin with Laura Gulley at the Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School, where he has been a student since 2013. This fall, Liam will begin his undergraduate studies in Viola Performance at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, under the tutelage of Professor Masumi Per Rostad. This summer, after attending the Ascent Viola Festival, he will attend the Bowdoin International Music Festival, where he will study with Professor Carol Rodland from the Juilliard School. Liam has served as Co-Principal Viola of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Youth Symphony Orchestra for the entirety of his high school career, and has performed as both a violist and violinist in the Rhode Island Philharmonic Youth Chamber Music Program, which included performing as part of the Honors Piano Quintet for the 2023-2024 Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra Music Director Search. He has additionally performed as an active freelance and volunteer musician in the Southern New England Area. In the summer of 2024, Liam served as Assistant Principal Viola of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA) under the direction of Maestra Marin Alsop. With NYO-USA, he made both his Carnegie Hall debut and international debut on their South American tour with stops in Uruguay at Montevideo’s Auditorio Nacional de Sodre, in Argentina at Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colón, and in Brazil at Rio de Janeiro’s Teatro Municipal and at Sala São Paulo. Liam is also a veteran of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI) in the Berkshires, where he participated in the String Quartet Workshop in 2023 and 2024. He performed with the BUTI Young Artists Orchestra at Tanglewood as Principal Viola in 2023 under the direction of Maestra Celia Llacer, and as Assistant Principal Viola in 2022 with Maestra Mei-Ann Chen. Liam has performed in solo masterclasses for Boston Symphony Orchestra Principal Violist Steven Ansell, Paul Laraia of the Catalyst Quartet, and Kerri Ryan, Assistant Principal Viola of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Liam’s awards and honors include being selected as a recipient of the 2024 Anthony Quinn Foundation Scholarship, First Prize in Music on the Hill’s Inaugural Scholarship Competition, Winner of the 2022/23 Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School’s Concerto Competition, performing with the 2022 NAfME All-National Honor Symphonic Orchestra, and Merit Prize Winner in the 2023 National YoungArts Competition. He was featured in the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and Music School’s 2023 Gala Fund video, “Beautiful Imperfection.”