With star-studded resume, violinist plays with Wichita Grand Opera

Wichita Grand Opera is billing Caroline Campbell, for her upcoming Valentine’s concert, as the “Violinist to the stars.”

And it’s hard to argue that designation.

Campbell has been on stage and in the studio with dozens if not hundreds of A-listers, including Andrea Bocelli, Sting, Barbra Streisand, Michael Buble, Rod Stewart, Neil Diamond and Bette Midler.

She credits megaproducer David Foster with finding her, after a performance with a string quartet that specialized in rock covers and playing with top-40 acts, to ask if she would be available to back up one of his artists.

“Ever since then it’s kind of been word of mouth for some of the collaborations I’ve been lucky enough to do, whether it’s Bocelli or Sting or Streisand or Buble or any of these people I’ve been work with,” she said from her home in Santa Monica. “Nothing can make me feel better.”

Campbell said she doesn’t get starstruck, because she’s working with the performers before the spotlights come on.

“You’re not just on stage with them, you’re seeing them at rehearsal, you’re seeing them in jeans or with no makeup, making them very human,” she said. “I see them as a human and as a friend; we share laughs together.”

For her Wichita Grand Opera concert on Feb. 11, Campbell will perform “hopefully fun versions of some famous opera tunes,” including selections from “Carmen,” whose arrangements she didn’t write, and “The Magic Flute,” which she did.

Also on the program is music from “The Godfather,” “Pinocchio” and a new arrangement of the “Romeo and Juliet” theme.

“It’s classical, but I like to think of it as accessible and loveable for all ages,” she said.

Backed by the Wichita Grand Opera Orchestra, the program also includes dancers Courtney Toben and Dan Carro, tenor Hugo Castillo and soprano Caitlin Chisham, winner of the company’s Talent of Tomorrow voice competition.

Born in upstate New York and raised in Hawaii, Nevada and California, Campbell began playing the violin at age 3, and by the time she was in high school was attending classes half the day and practicing the other half.

“Around age 20 I just kind of thought, ‘Is this really what I want to do? Do I want to spend my life in a windowless practice space playing the same concertos over and over, trying to be perfect?’” she recalled. “It was kind of a weird headspace.”

She put music on the back burner, applied and was accepted at Stanford University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s in psychology.

But she had not escaped the thought of performing.

“I still want to do music, but in an untraditional, creative way,” she said. However, “I did not know what that looked like.”

After her Wichita performance, she flies to Miami to join Bocelli for the rest of the month, then spending March on the road with jazz trumpeter Chris Botti before a European tour with Bocelli during the first week of April.

Living in the Los Angeles area has proved an advantage for Campbell, since most of the pop and rock recording is done there.

“At the time I thought, ‘What would I do in music in L.A.,’ but this is a place where you can jump off the traditional, formal track,” she said.

Campbell said she’s glad she blazed her own trail.

“I could not have planned for the direction things have gone but thank goodness I didn’t limit myself to only what I saw other violinists doing,” she said.

Caroline Campbell, in a Wichita Grand Opera concert

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11

Where: Century II concert hall, 225 W. Douglas

Tickets: $30-$75, from wichitatix.com or 303-8100

This story was originally published February 6, 2022 at 2:39 AM.