Rebecca Wishnia is a San Francisco-based violinist and writer. She performs with ensembles around the Bay Area, this season including Berkeley Symphony, California Symphony, Oakland Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, Santa Cruz Symphony, Opera San José, Pocket Opera, and Lamplighters Music Theatre, among others. A regular music critic for the San Francisco Classical Voice, she has contributed to the San Francisco Chronicle, VAN Magazine, and YourClassical, a subsidiary of American Public Media. Ms. Wishnia also writes essays for concerts and recordings.

Raised by two cellists, Ms. Wishnia began her musical studies at four. After earning her master’s degree in performance, with additional training from Villa Sinfonia Foundation, Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and the Suzuki Association of the Americas, she worked for nearly a decade as a music educator. Her teaching was the subject of a short documentary produced in 2017 by SFGovTv, and in 2018, she became the high strings instructor at College of Las Positas. As part of San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music program, Ms. Wishnia performed nearly one hundred educational concerts in the public schools in 2022. Her pedagogical products, including a series of simplified piano accompaniments for the standard violin repertoire, are used by students and teachers around the world.