17-year-old violinist Cameron F. Lugo made his concerto debut in 2011 performing as a soloist with the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra at the historic Tennessee Theater. Since then, he has appeared as a soloist with the Appalachian Classical Music Association (ACMA) Honors Orchestra and the Ottawa Chamber Symphony, and awaits a forthcoming performance of Sarasate Zigeunerweisen with the Symphony of the Mountains Youth Orchestra later this concert season. As the winner of the national Elizabeth Harper Vaughn Concerto Competition, Cameron will perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Symphony of the Mountains in the spring of 2016. In 2012, Cameron competed as one of seven national finalists and was named the National Second Place Winner of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Junior String Performance Competition, and in the same year he won the Second Place Award in the National Federation of Music Clubs (NFMC) Stillman-Kelley Competition at the national level. He was also the Second Prize Winner in the 2012 Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra Youth Concerto Competition and won First Place in the 2012 ACMA Young Artist Competition. This year, Cameron is representing the state of South Carolina at the Southern Division of the MTNA Senior String Performance Competition as the winner of the South Carolina state competition.

Besides his activities as a violin soloist, Cameron is a first violinist with Symphony of the Mountains, a fully professional symphony orchestra serving the Mountain Empire Region of Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. In addition, he is serving his fourth season as concertmaster of the Symphony of the Mountains Youth Orchestra. As a composer, Cameron is the recipient of several first-place awards at the national and international levels, including receiving the National First Place Award in the 2011 NFMC Junior Composer’s Contest and received first place in the international Pikes Peak Young Composer’s Composers Competition in both the chamber music and choral divisions.

In December 2013, Cameron’s composition for choir and orchestra How Excellent Is Thy Name was premiered by the Symphony and Voices of the Mountains and the Highlands Youth Ensemble under the baton of Cornelia Laemmli Orth.

In 2012, Cameron was selected as one of 12 violinists in the country to participate in the prestigious Brian Lewis Young Artist Program in Ottawa, Kansas at which he studied with such teachers as Brian Lewis of the Butler School of Music, Simon James of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, David Updegraff of the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the late Stephen Clapp, Dean Emeritus of the Juilliard School.