Marina Fragoulis’ musical arsenal includes a baroque violin, a modern violin, too many bows, and a fervent passion for very old music. Born and raised in Greece, Marina moved to the U.S. with her family and spent her formative years in Virginia where she learned to play the violin in the public school strings program. Many long hours and years later Marina ended up in New York studying violin at the Mannes College of Music with one of the most prominent violinists of the 20th century, David Nadien. 
 

Marina is the founder and director of Dorian Baroque, an ensemble that presents chamber, orchestral, and opera performances, and specializes in historical performance practices. The orchestra was featured two years in a row at the Manhattan School of Music’s Summer Voice Festival in fully staged operas by Francesco Cavalli and Claudio Monteverdi under the direction of Jorge Parodi. The orchestra has since collaborated in several opera productions with Cantanti Project and has presented concerts featuring international guest artists Marc Destrubé (violin), Elinor Frey (piccolo cello), Sang Joon Park (traverso), Jeffrey Mandelbaum (countertenor), and Silas Huff (conductor), and performs intimate chamber music concerts in venues across the city. 

A dedicated educator and proponent of public education, Marina was awarded the first Music Fellowship in the NYC Teaching Fellows program in 2002. For several years she created a full-scale music program at P.S. 125 in Harlem in conjunction with VH1’s Save the Music initiative, complete with a string orchestra, chorus, a general music appreciation program, and recorder classes. She even taught piano lessons to anyone that wanted them, all while simultaneously completing her Masters degree in Education at Lehman College. Marina went on to mentor the violin sections of the NJ Youth Symphony and Frank Sinatra High School and was a coach with the InterSchool Orchestras of NY.  She is a senior Teaching Artist with Midori & Friends and currently is on faculty at the Dalton School where she maintains a studio of budding young violinists. In her free time Marina goes hiking and on nature walks with her son, cooks everything from scratch, and trains four days a week as a powerlifter.