Karen Gomyo

Violinist Karen Gomyo won the 1997 Young Concert Artists International Auditions just one week after her fifteenth birthday, and was awarded the Norwalk Symphony Soloist Prize by Music Director Jesse Levine. The following year, she became the youngest artist ever to be presented in the Young Concert Artists Series in New York, in a critically-acclaimed debut as recipient of the Summis Auspiciis Prize. The Young Concert Artists Series also presented her Washington, DC recital debut at the Kennedy Center, in March, 2000.

Ms. Gomyo has performed as soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Claus Peter Flor, the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Hogwood, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Sweden's Norrköping Symphony Orchestra with conductor Joseph Swensen. In March, 2001, she performed her New York concerto debut with the New York Chamber Symphony at Alice Tully Hall. She will also perform with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, the San Antonio Symphony, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the Massapequa (NY) Philharmonic Orchestra and the New Britain (CT) Symphony during the 2000-2001 season.

Ms. Gomyo recently gave a five-city recital tour of Japan, including a concert at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and has given recitals at The Louvre in Paris and on the Ravinia Rising Stars Series, the Seattle Symphony Recital Series and the La Jolla Chamber Music Society's Prodigy Series. This season, her appearances include recitals at the Madison Civic Center and for the JCC of Greater Washington. Ms. Gomyo has appeared at the Aspen Music Festivals in Aspen and Japan, at the Usedom Music Festival in Germany, at Bargemusic in New York, at the 1997 Mostly Mozart Festival at Avery Fisher Hall in a pre-concert recital, and for the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations. She has been heard on WQXR and WNYC Radio in New York, and throughout the U.S. on National Public Radio's "Performance Today."

In 1999, Karen Gomyo was among those named "Twenty Under 20" by Seventeen Magazine, "99 People to Watch in '99" by Time Out New York Magazine, and "Ten Who are Hot and New" by A. Magazine.

Born in Tokyo in 1982, Ms. Gomyo moved to Montreal in 1984. She began to play in public soon after her first violin lessons at the age of five. At seven, she won a Special Jury Prize in the I Musici de Montreal Competition, which resulted in her concerto debut. At the age of nine, Ms. Gomyo won First Prize in the Canadian Music Competition in Ottawa. After playing for the noted teacher Dorothy DeLay in a master class in Chicago at the age of ten, Miss DeLay invited her to study at The Juilliard School, where she is currently a full scholarship student.

Karen Gomyo is recipient of support from the Jack Romann Special Artists Fund of YCA. She has been awarded grants from the Bagby Foundation for the Musical Arts, the Heckscher Foundation for Children, the Edward John Noble Foundation, the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation, the Clarisse B. Kampel Foundation, the Brady Dougan Foundation, the Cho Chang Tsung Foundation, and the Salon de Virtuosi.