Nicole Sauder 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. Nicole recently moved to San Diego from Los Angeles, where she was a freelance musician and performed with groups such as WildUp and Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra. She has been a long-term substitute with the San Diego Symphony since January 2017.