Praised for her expressive tones, elegant playing and a “dazzling performance” with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, DC, violinist Njioma Chinyere Grevious is a passionate and versatile solo, chamber and orchestral musician. A winner of the prestigious 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, she has been described as “superb” by the Chicago Classical Review.
Njioma, a graduate of the Juilliard School in 2021, was awarded the John Erskine Prize for scholastic and artistic achievement. In 2023, she won the Robert F. Smith First Prize and the Audience Choice awards in the Senior Division of the Sphinx Competition as well as the Grand Prize of the Concert Artist Guild (CAG) and the Young Classical Artist Trust (YCAT) Elmaleh Competition.
As a soloist, during the 2024-25 season Njioma made her debut at the world-renown Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with the Brussels Philharmonic and at Carnegie Hall in New York City with the Sphinx Virtuosi. She also debuted at the iconic Wigmore Hall, undertaking a UK tour as a YCAT artist. Njioma has performed in solo recitals across the United States including at the Seattle Chamber Music Society, Cal Performances, Strathmore Mansion, Mesa Arts Center and Pepperdine’s Wengler Center for the Arts. Named this year as the Chicago Philharmonic’s inaugural Artist in Residence, Njioma will be a featured soloist over the next three years in addition to building upon her outreach and mentoring of area children. In past years, Njioma has performed with the Boston Pops, Minnesota Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Florence Symphony Orchestra and Western Michigan Symphony, among others.
Njioma can also be heard with Tai Murray collaborating on the high-energy, cross-genre “Double Down” Invention No. 1 for Two Violins by contemporary composer Curtis Stewart. The piece is featured on the upcoming Sphinx Virtuosi album “American Mirror” to be released by Deutsche Grammophon in August.
A founding member of the Abeo Quartet, Njioma completed graduate studies with Ryan Meehan and the Calidore String Quartet at the University of Delaware where she was a fellow in the inaugural Graduate String Quartet in Residence Program. Abeo is the Third Prize winner of the 2023 Bad Tölz International String Quartet Competition. In 2022, Abeo won First Prize and the Audience Favorite Prize at the Yellow Springs Chamber Music Competition and was invited to participate in the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition. The quartet was also a finalist in the 2022 Young Concert Artists competition and has been a winner of Silver Medals in the Chesapeake International and Fischoff chamber music competitions. Abeo has appeared on WQXR Midday Masterpieces and WETA Classical Radio as well as in performances in the Schneider Concert Series, Alice Tully Hall, The Kennedy Center, Emerald City Music, in Montreal, Oslo, Norway, and in residence at the Glenstone Museum, where they premiered “Moonshot” by Alistair Coleman. At Juilliard, the quartet studied under the tutelage of the Juilliard String Quartet and has also been coached by members of the Alban Berg, Quatuor Ebene, Takács, Artemis, Brentano, Miró and Emerson quartets. The Abeo Quartet was Caramoor’s 2023-24 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence.
In 2024, Njioma became a member of New York City’s self-conducted, collaborative Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. She has also been invited to perform in numerous series and festivals including the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla SummerFest, Jupiter Chamber Players, Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Gateways Music Festival, North Shore Chamber Music Festival, Chiarina Chamber Players, CMSCVA, ChamberFest Cleveland, Music@Menlo, Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, Montreal International String Quartet Academy, Meadowmount, Fontainebleau Schools, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.
When she was four years old Njioma began her violin studies, becoming a scholarship recipient through Boston’s Project STEP string training program for Black and Latino youth as well as through Winsor Music. Her other principal teachers have included Ronald Copes, James Buswell, Irina Muresanu, Mariana Green-Hill and Farhoud Moshfegh. With her siblings at first, Njioma has performed in hundreds of outreach concerts. As a Juilliard Gluck Fellow she performed regularly for the medically vulnerable, retirees and children. Njioma also taught composition and collaboration to NYC elementary and middle school students from underrepresented communities through the Opportunity Music Project.
Njioma is the recipient of an outstanding violin by Pietro Guarneri of Mantua c. 1679 on generous loan from the Stradivari Society.
