Violinist Diana Seitz is currently violin faculty at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, Texas, where she resides with her husband and the youngest of her three children.

A soloist and chamber musician in demand, Diana has had the pleasure of performing in sold-out venues such as: Segerstrom Concert Hall (Costa Mesa, CA), Detroit Music Hall (MI), Lensic Performing Arts Center (Santa Fe, NM), Krannert Center (Champaign, IL), The Palladium (Carmel, IN), Touhill Performing Arts Center (St. Louis, MO), ARTIS-Naples (FL), Steinmetz Hall, and Dr. Phillips Center (Orlando, FL). Diana’s most recent engagements included a full-length Recital at Carnegie Hall with pianist Maya Tuylieva and cellist Esther Seitz.

Born and raised in Baku, Azerbaijan into a family of professional singers, Diana grew up backstage traveling with her parents’ rock band. She made her debut at the age of nine as a soloist with chamber orchestra. As a teenager, she went on to become a laureate of the Azerbaijan National Young Musician’s Competition, performing Paganini’s Violin Concerto No.1 with the Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Orchestra, including a fiendishly difficult cadenza by E. Sauret.

After graduating from the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory, Diana was forced to leave her homeland. A refugee fleeing severe ethnic persecution, Diana stepped off an airplane onto US soil in 1993 and never looked back.

Since then, Seitz has performed all around the US, including solo appearances with the Kansas City Civic Orchestra, Kinnor Philharmonic Orchestra (Kansas City, KS), Grassroots Festival Orchestra (PA), Endless Mountain Music Festival Symphony Orchestra (Corning, NY), Lancaster Symphony Orchestra (PA), and was the featured soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Turkmenistan on the soundtrack of the VR immersive documentary “1991”.

Diana’s international career has taken her to concert halls in Russia, Europe, and Mexico, and has garnered the highest praise of her colleagues.

Diana’s fast-growing YouTube channel Seitz String Pros has allowed her to connect with audiences in both the US and abroad. Falling in step with her passion for connection and community, Seitz was a featured speaker at TEDx McAllen in November of 2019. Her TED talk, titled “A Refugee’s Journey from Carnage to Carnegie Hall”, shares her life story and brings awareness to the plight of refugees in the USA and around the world.

Diana plays a 1759 Paolo Testore violin.