Lauren Brigden has been a member of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Viola section since 2006. Lauren began her study of viola with John Speer & entered the Conservatorium High School in 1995 before receiving a scholarship to study at the Sydney Conservatorium with Winifred Durie and also spending a year at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, where she was awarded the John Curro Viola prize.
She later graduated with a Bachelor of Music from the Australian Institute of Music. She has studied and performed in New York, London, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Milan and the Aspen Music Festival. She has received an Ian Potter Cultural Trust Scholarship and an Emerging Artist Grant from the Australia Council to study in Vienna with Gertrude Rossbacher. In 2009 Lauren performed with the inaugural YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, after winning a hotly contested internet audition for the position.
