A seasoned performer as both a solo and chamber musician, and an experienced private teacher / chamber coach, Sila Eser was a prizewinner (1st prize, viola) of the British Council String Competition in 2000 and was awarded a full scholarship at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester UK where she studied with Roger Benedict. At the age of 15 she made her solo debut in the 24th Istanbul Music Festival Young Artist Series. She was awarded “The Young Musician of the Year” at the Leo-Fast Festivals in 1999 and performed many chamber and solo recitals throughout Turkey and Europe. At 17, she was invited to play with the Mediterranean Youth Symphony Orchestra in Aix-En-Provence France as principal viola and performed at many festivals in Marseille, Orange, Paris and Cote d'Azur. She has performed at summer festivals including the Ascoli-Piceno Festival in Italy, the Norfolk Music Festival, Banff, and many others. As a chamber musician, Sila has collaborated with Edgar Meyer at the Banff Music Festival in Canada; and violist Lawrence Dutton, cellist David Finckel of the Emerson String Quartet at the Stony Brook Chamber Music Festival. She has also performed with the Tokyo String Quartet, and was the violist of the only winning quartet in the 2005 Yale School of Music Chamber Society Competition. While at Yale, she also worked as a chamber music coach, working with undergraduate music students as both a chamber coach and violin / viola teacher. Orchestrally, Sila has served as the principal violist in nearly every symphony in Istanbul; she has played with orchestras in France (such as L’Orchestre de la Mediterranée, Orange, Marseille, Cote d’Azur, and others), England (Royal Academy, Liverpool Symphony, Birmingham Symphony Orchestra), Chicago, Connecticut (Yale Symphony Orchestra); she has performed under the batons of Christophe Esenbach, Kurt Masur, Daniel Barenboim and John Williams at the Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall. She still serves as a principal viola in many orchestras in New York City. Sila holds a Bachelor in Performance degree from the Istanbul University State Conservatory where she studied with Ani Inci, Cigdem Epikmen and Venyamin Varshavsky and a Performance Certificate’s Degree from Northern Illinois University where she studied with Richard Young of the Vermeer Quartet. She then obtained her Master's degree at the Yale School of Music (where she was the first-ever Turkish violist admitted) with Jesse Levine and the Tokyo String Quartet. She was a recipient of the N. Eczacibasi Vakfi scholarships from Istanbul and two years of full tuition scholarships from Northern Illinois University and Yale School of Music. In addition, Sila has participated in master classes with many artists including Yuri Gandelsman, Bruno Pasquier, Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Kim Kashkashian, Karen Tuttle, Rusen Gunes, Roger Bigley, Eric Schumsky, Steven Dann, the Vermeer Quartet, Tokyo Quartet and the Emerson Quartet. Currently, Sila is pursuing a Doctoral Degree at the State University of New York at Stony Brook as the only student of Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson String Quartet. Sila performs on a modern viola by Alexander Tulchinsky.