Karen Gomyo

Karen Gomyo

Background

Karen Gomyo moved to Montréal at the age of two and lived there until she was eleven. She began violin with the Suzuki method, making her first public appearance at the age of five. At nine, she was a winner in the Canadian Music Competitions in Ottawa. When Dorothy Delay gave a master class for Suzuki instructors in Chicago, Gomyo's teacher submitted her name and Karen was among several young violinists selected to perform. In this way, she entered the radar of the famed pedagogue which led to Gomyo's joining Delay's violin class at The Juilliard School. Gomyo then moved to New York (1993), and studied there until 2001, first in the Pre-College division (where she was concert master of the student orchestra while already an active soloist), then at the college level. In 1997, she auditioned for Young Concert Artists International and became at 15, the youngest performer to be presented in their concert series.

Gomyo continued her studies at Indiana University with Mauricio Fuks (2001-02) and at the NEC with Donald Weilerstein (2002-07) graduating with the select Artist Diploma.

Among Gomyo's many awards are grants from the Bagby Foundation (Salon de Virtuosi Fellowship 1996) and Foundation Music Awards; the Clarisse B Kampel Foundation; the the Avery Fisher Career Grant (2008); and the Goucher College (Baltimore, MD) Janet and Avery Fisher Residency (2009).

Gomyo plays the 1703 "Ex Foulis" Stradivarius on loan from a private donor.

Performance

Gomyo has performed as a soloist with orchestras in Canada and worldwide: the NACO, the Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver Symphonies, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NY Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony, Tokyo SO among them. She has worked with such international conductors as Katzuyosi Akiyama (one of her mentors), Leonard Slatkin, Andrew Litton, David Robertson, David Zinman, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Andrey Boreyko, Hans Graf, Louis Langrée, James Gaffigan, Robin Ticciati and Pietari Inkinen.

In 2003 she performed the Oskar MorawetzDuo at the NAC with pianist Jean Desmarais. She has appeared regularly as a recitalist and chamber musician at festivals in the USA, Austria, Germany, France, Norway, Spain, Italy, Japan and elsewhere and collaborated with such artists as cellists Heinrich Schiff and Lynn Harrell, violinist/violist Isabelle van Keulen, violist Antoine Tamestit, and pianists Kathryn Stott and Anton Kuerti.

In 2008 Gomyo played the Sarabande from Bach's Partita in d minor at the first Symposium for Victims of Terrorism at the UN headquarters in New York. She was guest soloist with the NY Philharmonic at the annual 2009 Memorial Day concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine performing Vaughn William's The Lark Ascending.

Karen Gomyo has an affinity for the music of Astor Piazzolla and has performed his Four Seasons of Buenos Aires paired with Vivaldi's work of the same name at the Colorado Music Festival in 2011 (for a total of eight "seasons"). The Royal Conservatory of Music has scheduled a 2012 performance of classics, tango, and jazz with Gomyo and Argentinean pianist Pablo Zieglar at Koerner Hall.

Discography

Linde, Bo: Violin Concerto/Cello Concerto. Karen Gomyo (Violin), Maria Kliegel (cello), Petter Sundkvist (conductor), Gävle Somphony Orchestra. Naxos 8.557855