About Myles

A native of North Haven, Connecticut, violinist Myles Mocarski holds the position of Principal Second Violin with the Louisville Orchestra. Prior to joining the Louisville Orchestra in the 2024–2025 season, Myles held the position of Principal Second Violin with the Richmond Symphony in Richmond, Virginia during the 2023­–2024 season. As a student, he held section violin positions with the Albany Symphony and the Eastern Connecticut Symphony. He has also been engaged as a substitute violinist with the Washington National Opera.

A passionate musical ambassador, while completing his doctorate at the University of Maryland, Myles lived in the Collington Kendall Retirement Community as their 2022–2023 Artist-in-Residence. In this position, he regularly performed recitals and hosted lectures on a range of topics for enthusiastic audiences of varying backgrounds.

As an educator, Myles served as an instructor on record at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also taught the violin, viola, and piano at Harmonic Music Studios in Washington DC throughout his graduate studies. He has given masterclasses at institutions including his alma mater, UConn.

Myles began playing the violin at the age of 15 after being profoundly impacted by hearing an accomplished older violin student at his high school. He took infrequent violin lessons for a year but was mostly self-taught when he entered the University of Connecticut as a speech and hearing science student on a full-tuition scholarship at the age of 18. He dreamed of becoming a professional violinist but did not think he would succeed having started late and having been mostly self-taught up until that point. Having never done an audition of any kind on the violin, he worked up the courage to audition for the UConn music program in the middle of his freshman year as a speech and hearing student. He was shocked and thrilled to be accepted. Realizing that his undergraduate mentor Solomiya Ivakhiv believed in him, he decided to follow his dream of becoming a professional violinist and never look back. After two years of study in the program, Myles won the UConn Concerto Competition playing Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy and served as concertmaster of the UConn Symphony. He successfully auditioned for summer festivals including the National Orchestral Institute and the National Repertory Orchestra and won a part-time position in the violin section of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony.

He graduated from UConn in 2016 with a dual degree in music and speech language hearing science, summa cum laude and as an honors scholar. He subsequently earned an MM and DMA in violin performance from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2019 and 2023 respectively where he held an ensemble assistantship. After finishing his DMA in 2023, he won his first full-time orchestra job as Acting Principal Second with the Richmond Symphony. He feels so excited every day to be working as a professional orchestral violinist and is immensely grateful for the encouragement of all his teachers, mentors, friends, and family.