Nicole Sauder has been performing with the San Diego Symphony since 2017 and has been a member of the New Century Chamber Orchestra in San Francisco since 2019. Before moving to San Diego, she was a freelance musician in Los Angeles, where she played with groups such as WildUp and Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra and on various movie and television scores.
Nicole received her bachelor’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Paul Kantor and Ivan Zenaty, and her master’s degree from UCLA under Movses Pogossian and Guillaume Sutre. While at UCLA she was a member of the Vem String Quartet, the school’s graduate string quartet founded for the performance and study of Armenian music. She has performed in festivals such as Sunset ChamberFest; Caroga Lake Music Festival; Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music; Incontri in Terra di Sienna in Montepulciano, Italy; and the Villecroze Academy in Villecroze, France, as a student of Ana Chumachenco. She also enjoys teaching and has taught at Interlochen Center for the Arts as well as numerous schools in the Los Angeles area. In her spare time she enjoys playing the mandolin and bodhran (Irish drum) and sewing her own clothing.