About | Melissa Hullman
Jane performs Lalo's Symphonie Espagnol
Recognized for her work in helping elite performers play their best when it counts, Melissa Hullman’s students have won top prizes at national and international competitions by applying the principles she teaches in performance. As a musicians' performance coach specializing in movement and the body/mind in performance, as well as musicians' injury recovery/prevention and musicians' movement retraining, her career features teaching appointments at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University (Performing Arts and Medicine faculty), the Peabody Preparatory (violin/viola/chamber music faculty), and masterclasses, teacher trainings, and presentations in the US and abroad. In addition, for two years she served on the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine/Peabody Conservatory joint advisory committee for the formation of the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Rehabilitation Network Clinic for Performing Artists at Peabody.
Melissa Hullman's students have won top prizes at national and international competitions, with recent competitions including Dallas International Violin Competition, Tokyo Minato City International Violin Competition, Classic Violin Olympus International Competition, China International Music Competition (CIMC), with top prizes at William Byrd, Victor Tretyakov International Violin Competition, Grand Junction Symphony Competition, and Young Arts, among others.
Melissa Hullman has worked with members of major symphony orchestras, faculty at conservatories across the US, and pre-professionals, hailing from The Juilliard School, Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra, New England Conservatory, San Francisco Conservatory, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Sphinx Virtuosi, Peabody Conservatory, "The President's Own" United States Marine Band, Eastman School of Music, Sphinx Symphony, The University of Michigan, Boston Philharmonic, National Conservatory of Colombia, Bogota Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, Soulful Symphony, Music Institute of Chicago, Boston University, Rice University, and others. Her work has included presentations for the American String Teacher's Association National Conference, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Peabody Conservatory, the Sphinx Organization, and more.
Her students have been awarded scholarships to attend the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Yale School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Indiana University, Oberlin Conservatory, and the Peabody Conservatory, among others. They have auditioned for and attended summer music festivals in the US and abroad, including Prussia Cove, Fontainebleu Music Festival, THY Festival Denmark, Toronto Summer Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, Heifetz Institute, Bowdoin Music Festival, Manchester Music Festival, ENCORE Music Festival, Tanglewood (BUTI), and Sphinx Performance Academy.
In addition to her work on the Music and Medicine Task Force, Melissa Hullman's academic work includes serving as faculty and course developer for the Playing Well Anatomy+Movement series at Peabody Conservatory, where she contributed course material on the application of the principles of biomechanics and kinesiology to violin performance. She has also served on the SmartGuitar development team, a collaboration between Johns Hopkins School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Peabody Conservatory, and was a research team member for a musicians' dystonia study at Johns Hopkins University & Medicine.
Melissa Hullman currently teaches privately in Baltimore and is co-director of Young Musicians of Baltimore. She has served as President-Elect of the MD/DC Chapter of the American String Teachers Association, and has been Assistant to the Chair for the ASTA National Solo Competition and Chair of the MD/DC ASTA Solo Competition. She has adjudicated numerous competitions and events, including locally, the Columbia Orchestra Young Artist Competition, Pennsylvania/Delaware State Chapter's ASTA Certificate Exams, Peabody Honors Competition, and Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestras Concerto Competition, among others.
Locally, her pre-college students have been honored to perform as featured soloists in performances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Full Circle Dance Company at Maryland Artscape, Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestra, Baltimore All County Honors Orchestra, the Vagabond Players, and on the Education Channel; as first chair players in orchestras throughout the region, including the Maryland All-State Orchestras, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Side-by-Side Concert, Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestras, Peabody Youth Orchestra, Baltimore All-County Junior and Senior Honors Orchestras, and the Maryland Youth Symphony Orchestra; and as prizewinners in local competitions.
As a violinist, Melissa Hullman has been invited to share the stage at such diverse venues as the Kennedy Center, Canadian Music Week, the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the World Bank, Bethlehem Musikfest, Maryland Artscape, and Brooklyn's Jalopy Theatre. Her ongoing solo project series VIO/LUMINA plays on the edge of possibility by using improvised and composed solo works to illuminate the current state of violin playing as an art form, fusing the depth and breadth of music now with the brilliance of the classical tradition.
Locally, Melissa Hullman has appeared as a featured soloist on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Concerts and Conversations series, the BMA's Art After Hours series, with the Ballet Theatre of Maryland, and on the St Louis Church Concert Series, among others. As an orchestral musician, she has premiered and performed new works in performances with Inscape Chamber Orchestra and the Ann Arbor Symphony, and as a high-school aged violinist won her first orchestral audition as a member of the York Symphony Orchestra. She performs regularly as a duo with her husband, cellist Doug Jameson, and is a founding member of the Victoria Piano Trio. At home playing notes on the page or off the cuff, her musical collaborations range from solo, chamber, and orchestral playing to tango, jazz, folk, free improv, and Balkan, African, and Indian music. Her projects include recordings featuring composer Jonathan Leshnoff, Americana songwriter Caleb Stine, Montreal indie folk band Frank Feutre, and singer/songwriter Ellen Cherry; and performances with jazz pianists César Orozco and Marc Irwin, tango trio with Jake Leckie and Susan Alcorn, and Indian music with Carnatic vocalist K.S. Resmi and percussionist N. Scott Robinson.