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Phil MUSICIANS

Couples who Play Together:

Meet Aleksandra Labinska and Tudor Dornescu

What feels like a lifetime ago, we spent our early
years in Eastern Europe (Poland and Romania)
eagerly studying violin and touring Europe with
youth ensembles. Although we grew up in different
countries there is a great similarity in the way we had
been trained and began our lifelong relationship with
music. When time allows, we both share passion
for movies, long distance running, yoga, food and
traveling.

They intersected in Boston and now they blog about
their love of travel, but audiences may recognize
them as the Phil’s principal 2nd violin and violin I.

How did you first meet?

We met in the fall of 2009, when we were both
accepted into the doctoral program at Boston
University. We attended the orientation meeting
together, though we did not speak to each other!
We timidly acknowledged each other’s presence a
few weeks later... (laughs)!

At that time we were mostly preoccupied with
getting acquainted with the academic requirements,
performing in and outside of the school realm
and finding inspiration in late night practice and
conversations about the future of the performing
arts.
We started out by playing individually in various
Our backgrounds had been very different: Aleksandra ensembles and orchestras in the Boston area,
had already been living in Boston for 2 years having including our beloved Plymouth Philharmonic
just completed her Masters’ degree in Violin Orchestra, of which we are now both proud
performance at BU, while Tudor had just freshly members. We were playing together almost every
arrived from Houston pursuing the same degree. week in the same orchestra, so we decided to take

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