Bio and Reviews

Short Bio

Karen Bentley Pollick has performed as violinist with Paul Dresher’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 1999. She performs a wide range of solo repertoire and styles on violin, viola, piano and Norwegian hardangerfele. A native of Palo Alto, California, she studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco. At Indiana University she studied violin with Yuval Yaron, Josef Gingold and Rostislav Dubinsky and graduated with Bachelors and Masters of Music Degrees in Violin Performance.

She has several recordings of original music, including Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus and Ariel View, for which she has received three music awards from Just Plain Folks, including Best Instrumental Album and Best Song. On her own record label Ariel Ventures she has produced Dancing Suite to Suite, amberwood, and Homage to Fiddlers. She filmed Dan Tepfer's Solo Blues for Violin and Piano in Shoal Creek, Alabama in June 2009.

Pollick was concertmaster of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1984 and has participated in the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Composers Conferences. She has performed in recital at the American Academy of Rome, throughout the Czech Republic in the 2007 and 2008 American Spring Festivals and in England at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. She has appeared as soloist with Redwood Symphony in the world premiere of Swedish composer Ole Saxe's Dance Suite for Violin and Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony and orchestras in Panama, Russia, Alaska, New York and California.

Pollick has toured with the Erick Hawkins and White Oak Dance Companies, the Bolshoi Ballet and collaborated with the Alabama Ballet. Along with choreographer Teri Weksler and percussionist John Scalici. Pollick is a recipient of a Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham 2008 Interdisciplinary Grant to Individual Artists. With Australian pianist Lisa Moore, Pollick formed the duo Prophet Birds in spring 2009.

Pollick performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860.

Long Bio

Karen Bentley Pollick has performed as violinist with Paul Dresher's Electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 1999. She performs a wide range of solo repertoire and styles on violin, viola, piano and Norwegian hardangerfele. A native of Palo Alto, California, she studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco and was concertmaster of the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra. At Indiana University she studied violin with Yuval Yaron, Josef Gingold and Rostislav Dubinsky and graduated with Bachelors and Masters of Music Degrees with Distinction in Violin Performance. Other teachers include Nathan Milstein, Glenn Dicterow, Jean Jacques Kantorow and Phil Cohen.

She has several recordings of original music, including Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus and Ariel View, for which she has received three music awards from Just Plain Folks in 2004, including Best Instrumental Album and Best Song. On her own record label Ariel Ventures Pollick has produced Dancing Suite to Suite, amberwood, and Homage to Fiddlers. She has also recorded for Bridge Records, Albany Records, Mode Records, Numinous Records, CRI, Sony, RCA and Camel Productions.

She has collaborated with percussionist Ian Dogole of Global Fusion Music in a variety of musical styles merging string and percussion instruments from around the globe. Pollick has toured with the New York Philharmonic, Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project, Erick Hawkins Dance Company, the Bolshoi Ballet, and Barbra Streisand, and has recorded with the Dave Matthews Band and Evanescence, as well as numerous film scores at Skywalker Ranch.

Pollick has served as concertmaster of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie Kammerorchester as well as the New York String Orchestra under Alexander Schneider in 1984. During the summers she has participated in the June in Buffalo Composers Seminar, the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Olympic Music Festival, the Tanglewood Festival, and the Next Generation Festival in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. While residing in the San Francisco Bay Area she was Associate Concertmaster of the Monterey County Symphony and conductor of the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra Preparatory Orchestra. For several seasons, she was music director of the PACO Bach Celebration series and has conducted the San Francisco Concerto Orchestra on numerous occasions. Pollick received a grant from the Community Foundation of Silicon Valley for the world premiere of Swedish composer Ole Saxe's Dance Suite for Solo Violin in December, 2000 and premiered Mr. Saxe's Dance Suite for Solo Violin and Orchestra with Redwood Symphony, with whom she has also performed John Corigliano's Chaconne from The Red Violin and violin concertos of Bela Bartók, Johannes Brahms and Sergei Prokofiev. She has appeared as soloist with orchestras in Panama, Alaska, California and New York and performed Vivaldi’s Four Seaons and the Beethoven Violin Concerto in Russia.

With Paul Dresher's Electro-Acoustic Band, Pollick performed at Carnegie's Zankel Hall as part of the In Your Ear festival, hosted by John Adams. She was guest violinist with the Moscow based contemporary music group Opus Posthumous under the direction of Tatiana Grindenko and with the Seattle Chamber Players in their Icebreaker II: Baltic Voices Festival, which was featured on St. Paul Sunday. She has performed with the Four Horizons Quartet in the Philadelphia area, featuring the premiere of Across the Horizons by Penn composer Jay Reise and championed the violin and cello duos of Lebanon Valley College composer Scott Eggert.

Currently residing in Birmingham, Alabama, Pollick has performed the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and is a member of Birmingham Art Music Alliance (BAMA). Along with choreographer Teri Weksler and percussionist John Scalici, Pollick is a recipient of a Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham 2008 Interdisciplinary Grant to Individual Artists. Their original music and choreography debuted at Birmingham-Southern College in May 2009. Other recent collaborations include the New York based Ensemble for the Romantic Century, and appearances at the Amelia Island and Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festivals.

With her partner, Russian pianist and composer Ivan Sokolov, she has performed in recital in Seattle, Birmingham and at the American Academy of Rome in a program of duos composed especially for them by Sokolov, Charles Norman Mason (winner of the 2005 Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition) and Dorothy Hindman. She has concertized throughout the Czech Republic in the 2007 and 2008 American Spring Festivals with Louisiana State University Professor of Cello Dennis Parker. At the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Pollick performed David Felder’s Another Face for Violin Solo and Delcom video walls.

Pollick formed the duo Prophet Birds With Australian pianist Lisa Moore in spring 2009, performing a program of duos by John Adams, Sam Adams, Martin Bresnick, and Paul Dresher in Birmingham, Los Angeles and New York City. "The stylistic cohesiveness in the Prophet Birds program Monday at Hill Recital Hall was made all the more convincing by Karen Bentley Pollick's and Lisa Moore's determination to make it lucid and palatable." (Birmingham News)

She filmed Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for Violin and Piano in Shoal Creek, Alabama in June 2009. “Pollick pretty much lit the house on fire with her movements as well as her playing. But after having played the piano and violin simultaneously, she deserved to go wild.” (Birmingham News)

Pollick performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in Paris in 1860, a 1987 viola by William Whedbee of Chicago, a hardangerfele made in 2000 by Erling Aaning of Oslo, Norway and a F212 grand piano by Paolo Fazioli of Sacile, Italy.

Reviews

"Musically, the most riveting moment of the evening came in the Largo of a Leclair Sonata in A for Flute and Violin, with its sinuously, sensuously intertwining lines. Karen Bentley was the fine violinist." -- The New York Times

"Bentley was more than a match for the music's volatility, continually transforming her tone with sudden shifts of mood and temper." -- East Bay Express

"Bentley played with a rare degree of maturity and artistic discernment." -- Peninsula Times Tribune

" 'Another Face' featured violinist Karen Bentley in the bravura soloist role, a technically imposing part that she executed with dazzling ferocity." -- The Buffalo News

"Karen Bentley's violin represented the mind in creative tumult, a
beautiful lyric performance in which her fellow instrumentalists joined in
with comments, agreement and disagreement." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Bentley capitalizes on the expressive possibilities of her assignment." -- San Francisco Examiner

"Pleasure was also the key to Karen Bentley's performance of the solo part in the Violin Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Major, K. 207. Bentley keeps growing as a performer with each of her local appearances. Technically her performance was flawless, and her warm tones in the Andante and her lightheartedness in the fast movements were well chosen for this particular piece." -- Peninsula Times Tribune

"Bentley played the work with remarkable authority. It was not only her technique and tone but a kind of electricity that made it exciting." -- Peninsula Times Tribune

"Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 in D, K.218, was gratifying, with Karen
Bentley clearly in her element as a soloist" -- Anchorage Daily News

"...a brilliant performance by Karen Bentley. Bentley, 17, the orchestra's concertmistress, played the Mozart concerto with clean technique, exact intonation and bright rhythms. There were innumerable little cadenzas in decorative passages, but the large cadenza, charmingly developed, was her own." -- Peninsula Times Tribune

"...the absolute precision, intonation, beauty and depth of feeling of Karen Bentley's rendition of Mozart's Violin Concerto #5 in A Major was flawless. I don't believe Mozart would have wished it otherwise." -- Peninsula Times Tribune

"Karen Bentley gave us a fine performance of Schoenberg's "Phantasy". Bentley brought power and grace to the performance, as well as virtuosity. Both her and Sprecher were attentive to Schoenberg's sense of phrase and the result was a wonderful performance of a work too infrequently heard." -- Bloomington Herald-Telephone

"The hardest thing to do is describe what defies description. You can feel that a concert is special because it has that magic spark which makes the music come alive and strike a responsive chord in the listener. But what is that magic? Is it the technical perfection of the performers? Their insight? Their responsiveness to each other? Is it their own intensity of feeling which they communicate to you? Whatever it is, Bentley and Wodehouse had it in their spell-binding performance on Friday. It made the Debussy a study in sensuality and the Gershwin preludes a revel of robust vitality. Under their fingers the music took over so completely that the listener lost awareness of the performers." -- Peninsula Times Tribune

"Conventionally, this piece (Bartók Violin Concerto No. 2) is often treated quite narrowly as a 20th Century, often dissonant work. It took violinist Karen Bentley, a local product, Maestro Eric Kujawsky and the orchestra to dig deeper into that complex mass of notes and phrases to expose to the ears the hitherto overlooked Romantic content that expands it into a moving emotional experience. Bentley, a straightforward and utterly unaffected performer, has an outstanding interpretive musicianship that had the audience demanding her back again and again for curtain calls." -- Redwood City Tribune

"Charm is not the word that springs immediately to mind when contemplating the powerful visions of David Felder's Crossfire. Karen Bentley's elegant and powerful violin, and trombonist Barrie Webb's awesome stunning power coupled with the stark video images made a powerful impact...'What a Show!'" -- Yorkshire Post

"Bentley, as first violinist and soloist, led the small chamber orchestra, most of the musicians standing as they played. This included five additional violinists, harpsichordist Jonathan Salzedo, an early music specialist with wide experience nationwide, and several others. All provided solid, spirited support for the frolic. The sense of rustic bliss was enhanced by the lighted redwoods visible outside the church through an enormous window just behind the low altar.
The Concerto for Oboe and Violin featured Roger Wiesmeyer and Karen Bentley, the latter a Palo Alto musician whose career has ranged from playing in and with renowned orchestras and ensembles around the world to progressive rock. Bentley's tone was bright, her style ranging widely from lyrical to almost fiery in the final Allegro. Wiesmeyer's oboe sang out in the Adagio over neat pizzicato strings and sprinted through the closing movement." -- San Francisco Classical Voice

"Andrew Imbrie's Impromptu for violin and piano (1960) is a continuous work in several connected movements. It also treated the instruments with great independence. Atonal in language, rhythmically free and varied, sensitive to color and texture in shaping its materials, this piece still showed the classical roots underpinning its form and its use of motives. Karen Bentley and Gwendolyn Mok were in control of the work's considerable challenges, and communicated its freshness, lyricism, and vitality." -- San Francisco Classical Voice

"Perhaps I was most taken by Karen Bentley and her violin. Her adaptation to the changes in the improv selections, her mastery over arpeggiated scales and her sheer control over her instrument all came together and made for the epitome of a disciplined classical musician. All in all, Electric Diamond put on a killer demonstration." -- John Foxworthy

Another instrumentalist new to me as I believe that this is her first issued disc. Scandinavian composer Ole Saxe has written a superb suite of dances for solo violin and viola. Although the viola has just a short section of the Dance Suite, I so thoroughly enjoyed the disc and the talents of Ms. Bentley that I just had to review the record for the Journal. Her tone, phrasing, and technique provide all the background she needs to impress any music lover. I have been in touch with Ms. Bentley and she promises a disc devoted to the viola in the not too distant future. Brava! -- David O. Brown

Bentley, swaying energetically as she played, amplified the tango spirit ...
read more from Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Chorale Times Two, the second movement of Dresher's 1996-97 violin concerto, pitted a rhapsodic violin soliloquy, superbly played by Karen Bentley Pollick, against Dresher's more piercing electric guitar riffs. Again, the music depended on the contrasts -- in both time and texture -- between these two veins. -- Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle Music Critic

Yet the strongest impression was made by Onute Narbutaite, a 47-year-old Lithuanian whose work had apparently never been performed in America. Her most characteristic mode is slow, ruminative, gorgeously lyrical and utterly haunting. "WinterSerenade" (1997) -- exquisitely played by Mr. Shmidt, the flutist Paul Taub and the violist Karen Bentley Pollick -- is constructed of motifs from "Gute Nacht," the first song in Schubert's cycle Winterreise ("Winter Journey"), set for the ensemble of Beethoven's early Serenade in D (Op. 25). But it is not a pastiche. Its wispy texture and absorbingly sustained mood keep it going three times as long as the original and make you forget it -- until the ending, which releases your attention with a whispered quotation from Schubert's piano introduction. For the rest, Schubert is magically transformed into nature sounds, sighs, sobs and faltering steps. -- Richard Taruskin, New York Times