Morgan Lee Gerstmar is a Los Angeles based violist/violinist, composer, and educator from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. She holds an MFA in the Performer/Composer program from the California Institute of the Arts where she studied viola performance with Lorenz Gamma and composition with Sara Roberts and Wolfgang von Schweinitz, as well as a BA in Neuroscience, Musical Studies and East Asian Languages and Cultures from USC. She has a private studio of violin and viola students across Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

Morgan’s career as an educator has inspired her to use learning as a compositional and performance process for both students and professional musicians. Some of her pieces transform visual elements into a map for creating sound (Nip Nick Notch), while others place classically trained musicians into game scenarios to create music (Cosimo’s Stars). A common thread throughout Morgan’s compositions is increased responsibility to the performers and audience in generating material (Meltwater Pulse, Reaches), giving a distinctive timestamp to each individual performance.