Delores (Loree) Thayer, Violist is the Assistant Principal violist of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. She plays regularly with the Hartford Symphony, various Boston groups, and at other venues throughout the New England area as violist and Baroque violist. She has performed with the Arcadia Players Early Music Group, Wistaria Chamber Music Society and Wistaria String Quartet, the Berkshire Symphony at Williams College, and as Principal Violist with the Berkshire Choral Festival. Delores has performed with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Longmeadow Chamber Music Society, the Marlboro Music Festival Orchestra, and the New England Bach Festival under Blanche Moyse. She has worked with conductors Seiji Ozawa, Leonard Bernstein, Gunther Schuller, Otto Werner Mueller and Gil Rose. At Amherst College she performed Avant Garde string quartets by George Crumb and Steve Reich as well as new music composed by Amherst faculty and students. Delores has also performed as soloist with the Holyoke Civic Symphony and organized a benefit concert for the Friends of Hampshire County Homeless.

Ms. Thayer’s performances have taken her to the summer music festivals in Ayamonte and Santander, Spain; Spoleto, Italy; Tanglewood; Yale Norfolk Music Festival; and Manchester, VT Music Festival. In addition, Delores has performed in various faculty concerts in the five-college area, The Five College New Music Festival, and at Alice Tully Hall, Kennedy Center, and University of Southern California. She has participated in numerous premiers and has recorded for Helicon, BMOP, and CRI.

Delores has most recently been on the viola faculty at Amherst College and The Northfield Mount Hermon School. She has also served as guest instructor of viola at Mt. Holyoke and Smith Colleges. She has headed the chamber music department at Deerfield Academy and has been the artistic director of the Greater Manchester and the Mountains Adult Chamber Music Workshop in Manchester, VT.

A graduate of the University of Michigan and the Yale School of Music, her teachers and mentors were Frank Bundra, Raphael Hillyer, Walter Trampler, Joseph Silverstein, and Karen Tuttle.