Gregory Staples
Gregory Staples
First Violin
DSO member since 1999
Thirty-year-old violinist Greg Staples joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in December 1999. A native Detroiter, Gregory returned to the Motor City from Atlanta, where he served in the First Violin section of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra since 1994. In the fall of 1998, Staples was appointed Acting Assistant Concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony.
The son of former DSO Concertmaster Gordon Staples and longtime first violin section member Beatriz Budinsky, Gregory will now share the Orchestra Hall stage with both his mother and his former teacher, Principal Second violin Geoffrey Applegate. As winner of the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra’s concerto competition, Gregory soloed with the DSO in 1987 and again in 1993. In 1988, Gregory was one of seven American violinists chosen to participate in the first American-Soviet Youth Symphony, which toured the United States and the former Soviet Union.
A 1993 graduate of the Indiana University School of Music, where he earned an Artists’ Diploma, Gregory is also an avid chamber music enthusiast and performs on a 1775 Ferdinand Gagliano violin. Gregory has appeared with the Grosse Pointe Symphony Orchestra and the Birmingham Bloomfield Symphony, as well as at the Grand Teton Music Festival and the Holland Music Festival.