Karen Schnackenberg

Principal Librarian

Jessie D. & E. B. Godsey Chair

Karen Schnackenberg, Principal Librarian of the Dallas Symphony, has completed her 31st season with the orchestra. Previously she was Orchestra Librarian and Violinist with the New Orleans Symphony, Santa Fe Opera, Oklahoma Symphony and Chamber Orchestra of Oklahoma City. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Music Education and a master’s degree in Violin Performance, with emphasis in Baroque performance practice and music theory, with honors from the University of Oklahoma. She furthered her violin studies at the Meadowmount School of Music and the Flagstaff, Roundtop, and Aspen Music Festivals. As a freelance violinist in Dallas, Schnackenberg has performed in the Dallas Symphony violin section both locally and on domestic and foreign tours, as well as with the Dallas Bach Society.

Schnackenberg is proud to serve on the Editorial Board of the George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition, a project of the University of Michigan and the Gershwin Estates creating scholarly editions of the Gershwin catalogue. She has served three terms as President of the international Major Orchestra Librarians’ Association (MOLA), is Vice President of the local executive board of the American Federation of Musicians, and has been a contributing writer for the International Musican and Polyphonic.org. She has also written a blog called “From the Orchestra Library” and contributed an essay to the publication “Insights and Essays on the Music Performance Library” by Russ Girsberger and Laurie Lake. Schnackenberg is active on her orchestra’s musician committees, is an avid reader and amateur photographer, loves to travel, and lives in Dallas with her percussionist husband Brad Wagner.