An established Violin and Viola Duo for your Wedding Day:
We’d love to provide and perform the soundtrack to your special day. As a married couple ourselves, we enjoy playing for weddings as it brings back memories of the journey we share together.
Music is integral for evoking nostalgia and memories. We hope to use music to build upon the experience and memory of your perfect wedding day. We were brought together in marriage partly because we have the same views on what music means to us; we love to make personal connections with people through music.
Before starting our own duo, we were performing for weddings with gigging agencies throughout NC, and Lilian has experience performing for weddings in Australia, where she is originally from. We felt we weren’t experiencing the level of personal connections that we were seeking between customers and musicians, and also between musicians and musicians. We genuinely want to feel like friends who have been invited to witness one of the most important days of your life. A wedding is more than just another gig for us. We acknowledge that you spend a lot of emotion and thought to prepare for this moment in time. We decided to start our own violin and viola duo to make sure we are not compromising our vision.
We are an established violin and viola duo, not a gigging agency. This means you will be guaranteed to get us - Andy (violin) and Lilian (viola) - who are constantly working and rehearsing together to develop our unique sound to perform for your wedding. You can read our individual bios below!
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Born and raised in Australia, Lilian-Terri Dahlenburg began studies on the violin when she was eight years old. A year and a half later she performed with her father accompanying on the piano for the opening of a “Morning Melodies” concert featuring the singer Kamahl in the Melbourne Town Hall. She grew up playing with music societies and community orchestras in the Mornington Peninsula region of Victoria and when she was 12 years old performed the Concerto for Two Violins with the Frankston Symphony Orchestra.
Lilian-Terri holds associate music diplomas from the Australian Music Examinations Board in violin and viola. During her undergraduate degree she switched to viola full time. She has bachelor of music from the University of Melbourne and an honours degree from the Elder Conservatorium, South Australia. She has been a participant in the Australian Festival of Chamber Music and orchestral training programs with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra, Australian Youth Orchestra, Tasmanian and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras.
Prior to coming to the United States, Lilian-Terri was based in Adelaide, South Australia where she was teaching violin and viola privately and in schools including Prince Alfred College and for the junior program at the Elder Conservatorium. She was also a member of the Zephyr String Quartet where she performed across a range of genres and collaborated with art forms such as painting, dance and poetry. During her time with the quartet they received an APRA/AMCOS Australian Art Music Award. Performances included the Adelaide and Perth Fringe Festivals, the Edinburgh International Festival with the Leigh Warren Dance Company and for the Australian Embassy in Manila, Philippines.
In 2012 Lilian-Terri was a recipient of a teaching assistantship at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she completed a master of music degree. She continued further studies in Boston as the Jack Megan Outreach Scholar with a teaching assistantship at the Longy School of Music of Bard College where she holds a graduate performance diploma. Lilian-Terri has been a participant at the Colorado College Music Festival (2014) and was awarded a full scholarship to participate in the Cremona International Music Academy in Italy (2016). She has also adjudicated for the Massachusetts Music Educators All-State Orchestra program (2014, 2015, 2017).
Since moving to North Carolina in 2017, she has been working as a teacher and performer. During 2018-2020 Lilian-Terri was a lead teacher for the Winston-Salem Symphony’s P.L.A.Y. Music program, and also performed as a member of the viola sub list for the symphony. From 2018-2023 she held the principal viola position for the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra. She has also appeared as guest principal viola for the Spartanburg Philharmonic in SC. She has adjudicated for Winston-Salem Forsyth County NC auditions (2018) and was the viola clinician for the audition boot camp hosted by the American String Teachers Association in Winston-Salem (2019).
Currently Lilian works full time as a co-owner of Duo Licht’s teaching studio and chamber ensemble. She is proud of what she and Andy are building together and enjoys being involved in all aspects of their mission to bring joy, hope and connection through music
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Andy is excited to be fulfilling a well-rounded career in music as part of Duo Licht. He enjoys that he is fully devoted to Duo Licht, and it has become his full time commitment. Not only does Andy perform and teach, but he composes, arranges all the music for him and Lilian-Terri to perform. He has currently arranged over 600 pieces of music especially for the violin and viola duo. As a composer, he has been commissioned to write music for people’s special occasions. He also enjoys combining music and written words. His musical setting of “The Raven” was shown on Fox 8 news.
Prior to Duo Licht, Andy was a member of the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra from 2016 - 2023 as a section first violin. He has been on the sub list for the Winston-Salem Symphony. With the Winston-Salem Symphony’s P.L.A.Y. Music program, Andy served as a teaching assistant from 2017-2020. He also started and led the music theory and composition classes where he had taught group classes and wrote the curriculum. Before joining P.L.A.Y. Music, he served for 2 years as a full time volunteer with ArtistCorps. This service is an AmeriCorps program geared at bringing arts through teaching and performing to local schools. Through ArtistCorps, Andy assisted the orchestra program at Diggs-Latham Elementary School, Wiley Middle School, Wake Forest University’s summer Freedom School, Old Town Elementary School, and the Salvation Army.
Andy is a native of Massachusetts, and holds a bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and a Masters of Music degree in Violin Performance from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Andy’s violin teachers include Kevin Lawrence, (UNCSA) and Elizabeth Chang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst).
Are 2 String Musicians Enough for my guest count?
Short answer: Yes it is!
Have you been told that the larger the guest count, the larger the string ensemble needs to be in order to hear? Read our full blog below to understand this common misconception:
Our own music arrangements
Are you wondering what exactly it means when we say we write our own arrangements, and why?
Properly arranged music will bring out the strengths and the true nature of string instrument playing and technique. We write our own arrangements of all of our pop covers and other genres.
All of the arrangements are uniquely our own and cannot be found or downloaded elsewhere. What you hear in our recordings is not what you’ll get with any other string ensemble, as no one else has access to our unique arrangements.
We own a music writing and editing software called Finale, and we write our own arrangements of music for our violin and viola duo. Our arrangements aim to bring out the amazing qualities of these two instruments. We even strive to create the effect of sounding like more than two people. We incorporate techniques such as each of us playing 2 notes at the same time, called double stops. This adds a fullness to our duo, and can sound as if there are 3 or more performers present! We spend time in our arrangements making sure the violin and the viola speak equally, and even using effects such as passing the melody off to each other. We take any requests!
This video will show you some of the behind the scenes of what you’re paying for when you hire us. We’d love to invite you to look into how we arrange music requested by you!
The Violin and Viola as a Duo
The violin and viola duo is a unique instrumentation. The violin produces a higher tone that can soar above, producing a bright clear sound, while the viola produces a lower, richer, and soothing tone. Our instruments are like unique singing voices - like a soprano and a tenor - where each can take turns singing the melody. The violin and viola as an ensemble combination has been around for hundreds of years. Several composers loved to write for the ensemble, including W.A. Mozart who wrote two violin and viola duos in 1783. If you are concerned that there is something lacking or missing with just two people, we aim to challenge that through our unique arrangements.
Check out the link to our Youtube Channel for our videos and samples!
Pricing information
To inquire about pricing and information, please email us at andylilian@duolicht.com or simply fill out the contact form at the bottom of the page (also found on the contact us page).
