Carol Dylan comes from a musical family and received her Bachelor of Music degree, magna cum laude, from North Park University in Chicago where she was a pupil of Edgar Muenzer of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for six seasons, spending two years as its co-concertmaster. She received her Master’s degree in Violin Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music as a scholarship pupil of Charles Castleman and attended the Aspen Music Festival, winning a three-year fellowship to study with Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki.
Carol is the Assistant Concertmaster of the Chicago Sinfonietta Orchestra and has participated in its numerous European and American tours as well as in recordings on the Fanfare and Cedille record labels. Carol plays in the first violin section of the Elgin Symphony and performs in that orchestra’s educational chamber concert series, serving as the first violinist of the orchestra’s string quartet. Carol is also the Assistant Concertmaster of the Midwest Mozart Festival Orchestra; she has held positions on that organization’s Board of Directors for the past five years.
She was a member of the adjunct music faculty at North Park University for 20 years and currently teaches violin at Elgin Community College. Carol works frequently with jazz and society bands in Chicago and also in theater and ballet orchestras, appearing in many Broadway musicals and shows.
As a free-lancer Carol performs with several Chicago orchestras including the Ravinia Festival Orchestra, the Rockford Symphony, New Philharmonic and, in the past, the Woodstock Mozart Festival; she also plays in ensembles accompanying such stars as Luciano Pavarotti, Il Divo, Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion, Sarah Brightman, Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Barry Manilow and Clay Aiken. Carol has appeared on several WTTW TV Soundstage concerts with the artists Lyle Lovett, Burt Bacharach, Ronald Isley, Amy Grant and Peter Cetera.
In her spare time Carol enjoys canoeing and hiking with her husband Zac and their Golden Retriever Kirsi.