The 2009 Fisher Music Residency: Karen Gomyo, Violin

Release date: March 26, 2009 |

Violin prodigy Karen Gomyo will be the featured performer at Goucher College’s 23rd Annual Janet and Avery Fisher Music Residency. The concert will be held at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 27, in the college’s Merrick Lecture Hall.

This event is free and open to the public, but tickets must be reserved in advance by calling 410-337-6333 or by e-mailing boxoffice@goucher.edu.

Gomyo also will present two additional events on Thursday, March 26—a lecture-demonstration at 12:30 p.m. and a master class at 7 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public and will be held in Merrick Lecture Hall.

Recipient of a 2008 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Canadian violinist Karen Gomyo began playing in public soon after her first violin lessons at the age of five. At age 10, she was invited to study on full scholarship at The Juilliard School.

One week after her 15th birthday, Gomyo won the 1997 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and the following year, she became the youngest artist ever to be presented in the Young Concert Artists Series in New York.

She continued her studies at Indiana University and graduated in May 2007 from the New England Conservatory of Music, earning an artist diploma, the school’s highest honor.

In 2007-08, Gomyo made appearances with the St. Louis Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the New Jersey Symphony, as well as the orchestras of Utah, Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Phoenix.

Gomyo has appeared with the New York Philharmonic in six Concerts in the Parks in July 2005 and has performed with the Detroit Symphony; the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C.; the Baltimore Symphony; the Seattle Symphony; the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic; the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; the Oregon Symphony; the Florida Orchestra; and the orchestras of Honolulu, San Antonio, Rhode Island, New Orleans, North Carolina, Dayton, and Syracuse.

She has worked extensively in Japan with her mentor—conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama, with whom she has appeared at the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra many times.

Gomyo has given recital tour and chamber music tours of Japan, including concerts at Suntory Hall and the new Recital Hall at Chanel in Tokyo. She has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Louvre in Paris, as well as in the Ravinia Rising Stars Series in Chicago and in the Seattle Symphony Recital Series.

She has also appeared at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Avery Fisher Hall in a pre-concert recital and at the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations.

Gomyo plays the rare “Ex Foulis” Stradivarius of 1703 that was bought for her exclusive use by a private sponsor.

The Janet and Avery Fisher Music Residency is funded by Janet Fisher, a 1938 Goucher alumna, in memory of her late husband. This annual two-day residency offers music students the opportunity to interact with and learn from internationally known professional musicians. Past Fisher artists-in-residence have included Eugenia Zukerman, Jennifer Frautschi, and Shai Wosner.