Gabriela performs on Show 451.

Gabriela Salvador Riera (violin), 16, is a vocal and strings major at Cab Calloway School of the Arts in Wilmington, Delaware. Gabriela began playing violin at age six and studied with Julianne Murphy-Ruiz at the Music School of Delaware. She currently studies with Shelley Beard at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, where she also plays in the Advanced-Study Newman String Quartet coached by William Polk of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has been fortunate to be a PMAY (Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth) artist since 2020, and is currently the concertmaster of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra.

Recent successes include 2nd place in the prestigious 2023 Sphinx Competition, junior division, and winner of the 2022 Delaware Concerto Competition for Young Musicians as well as the high school division of the 2022 Betsy L. Kent Newark Symphony Concerto Competition, resulting in performances with the Wilmington Community and Newark Symphony Orchestras. Also in 2022, Gabriela was awarded a BMFA Springboard Grant and was named high-school winner of the Coastal Concerts Competition.

This past summer, Gabriela attended the Encore Chamber Music Summer Academy, as well as intensives at Julliard and CIM with the Sphinx Performance Academy (SPA). She is an alum of the Sphinx Performance Academy at the Curtis Institute, and a two-year recipient of the SPA X-Factor Award. In the summer of 2022, Gabriela participated in a six-week intensive at the Heifetz International Music Institute, and in 2021, Gabriela was selected for the inaugural national cohort of Fortissima, an artistic and leadership development program for young women in classical music at the Colburn School in LA. Also in 2021, Gabriela had the opportunity to take part in the Chicago-Youth-in-Music Festival where she played side-by-side with the Chicago Symphony under the baton of Riccardo Muti. At her high school, Gabriela is a soprano in the school Vocal program, a member of the 2023 Delaware All-State Treble Choir, a member of the National Honor Society, 1st violin in the Cab Calloway Honors Quartet, concertmaster of the select high school Chamber Orchestra, and Assistant Music Director and violinist in her school’s musical productions of Hairspray and The Prom.

Receiving the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award will allow Gabriela to upgrade her instrument as well as cover college audition expenses, including recording, travel, lodging, and consultation lesson costs.