A native of New Zealand, Martin Riseley began violin studies at the age of six, and gave his first solo concert when he was ten. After several years of study with the English violinist Carl Pini, he entered the University of Canterbury School of Music as a pupil of Polish violinist Jan Tawroscewicz in 1986, with whom he performed in the Vivo String Quartet in 1987-88. The group received a special award from Lord Yehudi Menuhin at the 1988 Portsmouth String Quartet Competition, the same year that he won the Television New Zealand Young Musicians Competition and Australian Guarantee Corporation Young Achievers Award. Upon graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree he went to the Juilliard School in 1989 where he studied with Dorothy DeLay and Piotr Milewski. His other coaches there included Felix Galimir, Joel Smirnoff, Samuel Rhodes, Harvey Shapiro, and Paul Zukovsky. In 1991 he graduated from Juilliard with a Master of Music degree, and in 1996 with his Doctorate of Musical Arts degree.
He has performed with most leading New Zealand orchestras as well as several in Mexico, appearing on both national radio and television in both countries, and has also performed as soloist in Australia, Japan, and Great Britain. In Canada he has been Concertmaster of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra since 1994, and has performedconcertos under conductors such as Grzegorz Nowak, Enrique Batiz, Uri Mayer, Leif Segerstam, Enrique Barrios, Jorge Mester, Marco Parisotto and Raffi Armenian. His solo and chamber concerts have appeared on national CBC radio. He recently gave the North American premiere of the Violin Concerto by Gavin Bryars, and played the Chaconne from the “Red Violin” by John Corigliano at the ESO’s summer festival. He also premiered a concerto written for him by the ESO’s composer-in-residence, Allan Gilliland, in 2002
He played with the National Arts Center Orchestra as both Guest Concertmaster and then Interim Associate Concertmaster for the 2002-2003 season, and also appeared in chamber music performances there with Pinchas Zukerman and Jon Kimura Parker. While in Ottawa he also appeared with Jamie Parker and Lawrence Vine at the Almonte Town Hall concert series for CBC radio. He was also Guest Concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in August 2003
He has also been Guest Concertmaster of the McGill Chamber Orchestra and the National Academy Orchestra of Canada. In 2007 he performed the Brahms B major Trio with William Eddins and Yo Yo Ma at the Annual Fundraising Gala of the Edmonton Symphony. He performed Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ Trio at the Kennedy Center in Washington as part of an Alberta Arts contingent in 2006. He has performed the complete Paganini Caprices throughout New Zealand, and recently surveyed the Solo Bach works alongside solo violin works by New Zealand composers. He is Patron of The Piano, an Arts facility and concert hall in Christchurch’s Arts Precinct.
Since becoming Head of Strings at the New Zealand School of Music he has premiered John Corigliano’s Red Violin Chaconne, and teamed up with Diedre Irons for regular recitals, including Chamber Music New Zealand. He has also made the first CD recordings of some important chamber works of Douglas Lilburn and ‘Meditations on Michelangelo’ by Jack Body on Naxos with the NZSO, which won the Vodafone Music Award for best classical CD in 2015. A premiere recording of violin works by David Farquhar was released on Rattle the same year. Since that year he has also been Concertmaster of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra: he has also conducted that orchestra, as well as the Edmonton Symphony, Manawatu Chamber Orchestra, Academy Strings of Alberta, and the NZSM Orchestra. His piano trio, the Te Koki Trio, with Jian Liu and Inbal Megiddo, has performed throughout New Zealand and in Sydney, Singapore and Malaysia. Its debut CD was a finalist in the Vodafone Music Awards for best classical CD in 2017.