Violinist/Violist, Alexis Sykes is a member of New York City Ballet Orchestra and performs regularly as a substitute musician with New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Philadelphia, and New York City Opera Orchestras. She has also performed as Associate Principal Second Violin with the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House; with Boston, Saint Louis, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras; and with Orpheus, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and New York Chamber Soloists Orchestras. As a chamber musician, her performances include Bargemusic, Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert Series, Electric Earth Concerts, Chamber Music Sedona, North Country Chamber Players, and Monadnock Music.
During covid Alexis has focused on remote and socially distant performing arts projects such as producing a collaborative performance/film between Dancers & Musicians of NYCB and the Bronx Zoo, pivoting her company, Arts At Work (https://www.artsatwork.us/), to virtual workshop offerings, creating a female lead Dancers & Musicians of NYCB Villa-Lobos film, and organizing a remote community chorus project aimed at revitalizing live performance when it is able to return.
Alexis has also collaborated with popular artists such as Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Peter Gabriel, Michael Buble, Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Andrea Bocelli, Carrie Underwood, and Adam Levine, as well as made appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, The View, Saturday Night Live, and the Today Show. Her movie soundtracks include Mother, Begin Again, Jimmy P., Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Zoolander 2, The Greatest Show on Earth, Keeping up with the Joneses, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, So Undercover, Great Hope Springs, A Late Quartet, and The Goldfinch.
As a guest artist for five summers at the Peruvian North American Cultural Institute: Festival de Musica de Camara, Alexis had the pleasure of coaching, giving master classes, and performing with a mixture of professional, student and adult amateur musicians. In a similar vein, she participated in the outreach festival Conciertos De La Villa De Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic in fall of 2017. As a pedagogue, she has run a private teaching studio in Brooklyn, in addition to teaching chamber music, violin, and viola on the faculty of Third Street Music School and St. Ann’s School.
Alexis grew up in Brooklyn and began playing the violin when she was six. She is a recipient of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Young Musicians Award and received her Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Sally Thomas, Masao Kawasaki and Karen Tuttle. Additionally, she earned a Graduate Diploma from the New England Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Boston Symphony concertmaster, Malcolm Lowe. Alexis has participated in numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Norfolk, Music Academy of the West, Taos, Spoleto (Italy), Fontainebleau, and Ravinia Vocal Chamber Music Program as well as the New York String Seminar and Juilliard String Quartet Workshop. She is a recipient of the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts Award and won the Borromeo String Quartet Guest Artist Award, which resulted in a performance with the quartet in Jordan Hall. As a member of the Hudson String Quartet, she won the New England Conservatory Honorary Chamber Ensemble Competition.