Danse Negre From African Suite, Op. 35, No. 4 – Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
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Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
– featuring Jennifer Koh, violin
Jennifer Koh
Grammy Award-winning violinist Jennifer Koh is recognized for her intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance. She is a forward-thinking artist dedicated to exploring a broad and eclectic repertoire, while promoting equity and inclusivity in classical music. She has expanded the contemporary violin repertoire through a wide range of commissioning projects and has premiered more than 100 works written especially for her.
This season, Koh continues her New American Concerto series, an ongoing, multi-season commissioning project that explores the form of the violin concerto and its potential for artistic engagement with contemporary societal concerns and issues through commissions from a diverse collective of composers. She performs the seventh world premiere in the series, Nina Young’s Violin Concerto Traces with the LA Chamber Orchestra, as well as Vijay Iyer’s Trouble and Missy Mazzoli’s Procession with orchestras around the world. Koh also performs works from her critically acclaimed solo and duo commissioning projects including Alone Together, Bach and Beyond, Bridge to Beethoven, Limitless, and Shared Madness. She also begins a new role as Artistic Director of the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts at the Kennedy Center, where as part of the series she performs Two X Four (two violinists x four composers), joining forces with her mentor Jaime Laredo and members of the Juilliard Orchestra in double-violin concertos by Bach, Philip Glass, David Ludwig, and Anna Clyne; and in the spring she is joined by Missy Mazzoli for an all-Mazzoli program of solo violin and duo works.
Koh has appeared with orchestras worldwide including the New York, Los Angeles, and Helsinki Philharmonics; Cleveland, Mariinsky, Minnesota, and Philharmonia (London) Orchestras; and Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, BBC, Chicago, Cincinnati, National, New World, NHK, RAI (Torino), and Singapore Symphonies. Named Musical America’s 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year, and “A Force of Nature” by the American Composers Orchestra in 2019, Koh has won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Concert Artists Guild Competition, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has a BA in English literature from Oberlin College and studied at the Curtis Institute, where she worked extensively with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir. She is an active lecturer, teacher, and recording artist for Cedille Records. Koh is also Artistic Director of arco collaborative, an artist-driven nonprofit that fosters a better understanding of our world through a musical dialogue inspired by ideas and the communities around us.
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Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27 – Sergei Rachmaninoff
