Shannon Reilly specializes in the study and performance of contemporary music as a violinist. A dedicated collaborator, she pursues working with young composers, often premiering her colleagues’ compositions.

Shannon regularly performs with Buffalo-based Liminal Space Ensemble, for whom she premiered resident composer Evan Courtin’s D’s for Solo Violin in June 2023. She is the violinist for Tempus Fugit, a chamber group of mixed instrumentation who routinely performs for the Friends of Vienna and the University at Buffalo (SUNY) such repertoire as Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time and Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. Shannon is also the violinist of the Alla Balena Ensemble, for whom she has performed works by composers Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez and Bob Morris in Washington D.C., at the Eastman School of Music, and in Guadalajara, Mexico, featuring the celebrated La Coperacha. A multifaceted musician, Shannon has played for the Buffalo Chamber Players, the Bang on a Can Music Festival, Black House Collective, Quartet442, and Little Cake. She has partnered with composer Anna Heflin in the creation and performance of The Wonderland Series, a one-act opera based on the life and works of Lewis Carroll for singing solo violinist, and more recently on To Elvedon, a tactile surround-sound live immersive examination of sound moving through water for the 2023 Keybank Rochester Fringe Festival. Shannon has performed consistently with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra as a substitute violinist since 2019 and plays for numerous contemporary music and art festivals, including the last six consecutive years of the June in Buffalo festival, where she workshops and premieres the works of emerging composers alongside performing works by the Festival’s esteemed faculty.

Shannon teaches violin and viola at the venerated Buffalo Suzuki Strings school, and she was the violin professor at the University at Buffalo for 4 years. Her previous projects include performances on albums “A Redundancy of the Angelic” by Anna Heflin and “susurrus” by Connor D’Netto, the premiere of David Felder’s Jeu de Tarot II alongside Irvine Arditti, and founding and performing as the violinist for Duo Purla for 4 years, during which time she commissioned multiple compositions, was the Ensemble in Residence for the 2021 ZFestival, and performed as featured ensemble for the 2022 21st Century Guitar Conference.

While a student at the Eastman School of Music, Shannon regularly performed in the Musica Nova Ensemble under the direction of conductor Brad Lubman, as well as playing with Broadband Ensemble and Eastman’s OSSIA. Shannon holds a BM and MM in violin performance from Eastman and has studied with Prof. Reneé Jolles, Prof. Charles Castleman, and Richard Rood.