(Photo credit Rachel Hadiashar)
Raised in Portland, Oregon, Megumi Stohs Lewis started playing the violin at age three, but grew up with a dream of studying agricultural science. The summer she turned sixteen, she attended the Olympic Music Festival, held on a beautiful farm in Washington State, and realized that music and the countryside were a perfect combination. Since then, Megumi has soloed with orchestras throughout the US and Japan, and has toured with ensembles throughout Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Now residing in Boston, she is a co-founder of A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra and co-artistic director of the Sheffield Chamber Players; has been a guest with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Shelter Music Boston, and the Boston Pops; and plays regularly with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Starting in 2008, Megumi picked up the baroque violin and quickly fell for the gut strings and a variety of period bows. This love has led to performances with Boston Baroque, the Handel and Haydn Society, Sarasa Ensemble, and the formation of Antico Moderno, a period instrument ensemble created to actively commission contemporary works. She also loves to fiddle and play rock and regularly toured with Britain’s Jethro Tull. Megumi’s primary influences include her teachers Lucy Chapman at the New England Conservatory and Camilla Wicks and Ian Swensen at the San Francisco Conservatory. Especially in chamber music and period performance, Roger Tapping, Martha Katz, Phoebe Carrai, Manfredo Kraemer, Jean-Michel Fonteneau and Mark Sokol have been significant mentors. Megumi is on the violin and chamber music faculty at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. She is currently satisfying her longing for agriculture mostly through viniculture during her summers at the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival.