Viola
Ursula Steele joined the Seattle Symphony in the 2024/2025 season. Steele is a graduate of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where she studied with violist Atar Arad and received her Bachelor’s, Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma.
While at Jacobs School of Music, Steele was awarded the Kuttner Quartet Scholarship, an intensive chamber music residency including mentorship from the Pacifica Quartet. She was also awarded a quartet residency at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, Germany. Her quartet attended the Robert Mann String Quartet Seminar, the Ashkenazi/Kirshbaum Chamber Music Seminar at Heifetz International Music Institute and the Chamber Music Residency at the Banff Center.
In the summers of 2018 and 2019, she was a participant of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute Program for Piano and Strings. In 2019, she won the Viola Concerto Competition at Jacobs, thereby performing Alan Shulman’s Theme and Variations with orchestra conducted by David Neely. In early 2023, via a trial period for co-principal viola, she had the opportunity to play in the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm. Most recently, she was a violist in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
