Minor “Mick” Wetzel

A native of Almira, Washington, violist MINOR L. WETZEL studied at Indiana University and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan. His teachers have included Paul Coletti, Roland Vamos, Emmanuel Vardi, Donald McInnes, Camilla Wicks, and Tadeusz Wronski. He joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the start of the 1994/95 season.

His orchestral experience includes the Spokane Symphony, principal viola of the Ann Arbor Chamber and Sacramento Symphony Orchestras, the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and – for the six years prior to joining the Philharmonic – the San Francisco Symphony. He has performed as soloist with various local orchestras. His awards include the W. E. Hill & Sons Award at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition.

Wetzel has worked as a chamber music coach at the USC Thornton School of Music and taught viola performance on the faculty of UCLA. He currently teaches viola performance at California State University Fullerton. He is a regular performer on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Chamber Music series and has also performed with various ensembles at the Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella concerts.

He and his wife Stacy, a member of the first violin section of the Philharmonic, have three children.

Stacy Wetzel

Violinist STACY WETZEL attended the Juilliard School and the San Francisco Conservatory. She studied at the Banff Centre and received her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Washington and her Master of Music degree from the University of Michigan. She was the first-place winner in the Washington International Competition and the Buffalo Young Artists competition, and she won the Swiss Radio Prize in the Tibor Varga Competition in Switzerland.

Wetzel has been a soloist with the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony and the Buffalo Philharmonic. For two years she was concertmaster of the Ann Arbor Chamber Orchestra, and she has performed with ensembles including the Soviet Émigré Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music West, and the Michigan Chamber Players. She was on the faculty of the University of Michigan and served on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

She joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1987. In the fall of 1995, she followed her husband (who joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1994) to Southern California and won the audition for a position in the second violin section of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 2001 she moved up to join the orchestra’s first violin section. She made her concerto debut with the Philharmonic playing “Autumn” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with subsequent performances at the Hollywood Bowl in August of 2003. She appeared on the LA Phil’s Symphonies For Youth series and educational programs in January and February of 2014, performing and acting in “Vivaldi’s Four Seasons”. Wetzel is a frequent performer on the Green Umbrella series as well as the LA Phil’s Chamber Music series.