Player Biographies: Monica Minden, Concertmaster
Concertmaster
Monica Minden is a retired program manager
from the former Hughes Research Labs in Malibu,
CA. Her research specialties were
particularly in adaptive optics and fiber lasers.
Violin competed with science throughout her career, and
finally won out after her retirement. She
had stopped playing for five years, then started again by
joining the Palisades Symphony in the second
violins.
Monica attended New York's High School of Music and Art,
then MIT, and received her Ph.D. in Engineering from UCLA. She
has played with the New York Youth Symphony, the MIT Symphony,
gone on tour with the Camerata of Los Angeles, and played for
years at Pepperdine University under Tom Osborn. She studied
for short times with the well-known teachers Joe Chassman and
Mitch Newman, and for longer times with superb but injured and
ultimately unknown (as violinists) Sam Weiss and Joseph Yuan.
She currently keeps in shape by participating in Nathan Cole's
online classes, playing with the Santa Monica Symphony and
numerous other local ensembles, and reading chamber
music with friends and at workshops. She is on the board of
the Chamber Music Society of Santa Barbara.
She is married to former colleague Hans Bruesselbach, and has
two daughters and two grandsons.