A native of Chicago, violinist Aimée Kreston spent her formative years studying with renowned pedagogue Almita Vamos. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Jascha Brodsky, Yumi Ninomiya, and Felix Galamir. She continued her studies with the legendary concertmaster Michel Schwalbe.

In 1989 Ms. Kreston became the youngest member of the Minnesota Orchestra and a year later won the post of Principal Second Violin in that ensemble. From 1993 to 1997 she served as Concertmaster of L’Orchestre de Paris, the only American in that ensemble. She has been privileged to work with some of the worlds greatest conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Sergio Celibidache, Carlo Maria Guillini, Georg Solti, and Pierre Boulez.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1998, Ms. Kreston joined the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra as concertmaster, and in June of 2000, she was engaged as Concertmaster of the Pasadena Symphony. Ms. Kreston enjoys a lively and demanding schedule in the motion picture industry. She has performed on the sound tracks of over a hundred movies including Finding Nemo, Troy, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Ms. Kreston has been heard in live broadcasts on NPR, toured Alaska with the Vista Trio, and has performed as soloist at the Carmel Bach Festival. Ms. Kreston has performed in nearly every European country, having appeared as soloist at Amsterdam’s Concertgebow and as chamber musician at the Chatelet Chamber music series in Paris, the Reims music festival, and at the Queluz Chateau festival in Portugal. Ms. Kreston was a prizewinner of the Tibor Varga International violin competition in Sion, Switzerland in 1989 and at the WAMSO Young artist’s competition in Minneapolis in 1988.

A committed teacher, Ms. Kreston has been a prime mover of Project Harmony, a program designed to bring high quality, low-cost musical training to disadvantaged children in Los Angeles. In 2002, she traveled to Cambodia where she conducted teacher training at the Phnom Penh conservatory. She is also on the faculty of the Henry Mancini Institute at UCLA and at the Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles. Ms. Kreston is married to Pasadena Symphony violist Andrew Picken.