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 curates her first full season as Artistic Director of the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts at the Kennedy Center. A focal point of the season is an immersive all-day festival, Sounds of US, presenting over 40 premieres by composers including Carlos Simon, Angélica Negrón, Vijay Iyer, Nina Young, David Ludwig, and students from The Juilliard School, performed by the National Symphony Orchestra’s Youth Fellows and Juilliard students. To close the Fortas season, Koh performs J.S. Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, considered the pinnacle of writing for the instrument. Also this season, Koh performs Barber’s Violin Concerto with the New York String Orchestra and Jaime Laredo at Carnegie Hall, marking the 25th anniversary of her debut there. She curates and performs on a program at the Library of Congress, featuring a world premiere by Tania León, and continues to perform works from her critically acclaimed solo and duo commissioning projects including Alone Together, Bach and Beyond, Bridge to Beethoven, Limitless, and Shared Madness.
Koh continues her New American Concerto series, a 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. The project includes new concertos by Nina Young, Missy Mazzoli, Tyshawn Sorey, Courtney Bryan, Lisa Bielawa, Christopher Cerrone, and Vijay Iyer.
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.