Karen Bentley Pollick is one of America’s leading contemporary musicians, performing a wide range of solo repertoire and styles on violin, viola, piano and hardingfele (Norwegian Hardanger fiddle) to extend the boundaries of the concert experience, from the Baroque to cutting-edge contemporary music and live improvisations. 

A native of Palo Alto, California, she began piano lessons at age 5 with the Armenian pianist Rusana Sysoyev. During high school she studied violin with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco. She performed in the master-classes of Nathan Milstein, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, and Glenn Dicterow, and studied with Rostislav Dubinsky, Josef Gingold and Yuval Yaron at Indiana University, where she received both Bachelors and Masters of Music Degrees in Violin Performance with a cognate in Choral Conducting.

Her recordings include Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus and Ariel View, for which she 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 music featuring chamber works by Russian pianist-composer Ivan Sokolov on <amberwood>, Homage to Fiddlers and Russian Soulscapes; solo violin music by the Swedish composer Ole Saxe on Dancing Suite to Suite and Peace Piece; and filmed Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for violin and piano for one performer simultaneously.  She has also recorded for Albany, Blue Coast Records, Bridge, Camel Productions, CRI, Innova, the Lithuanian Music Centre, Mode, Neos, Numinous, RCA, Sony and Tzadik.

Karen’s debut recording  for Toccata Classics presents Hermann Graedener’s two violin concertos with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, recorded with Maestro Gottfried Rabl in Kiev in June 2018, and winner of a Silver Medal in the 2019 Global Music Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the album and instrumental solo performance categories. Chamber Music of Ivan Sokolov, recorded in Wuppertal, Germany in September 2019 and released by Toccata Classics in August 2020, received a Gold Medal for Best Composer and a Silver Medal for Instrumental/Instrumentalists in the December 2020 Global Music Awards.  Just Plain Folks honored Ole Saxe’s Peace Piece in their 2020 Music Awards in the Best Solo Instrumental Album and Best Solo Instrumental Song categories. Ole Saxe Orchestral Works, a pandemic recording project between Sweden and Mexico with the premiere recording of orchestrations for Dance Suite, My Manchu Princess & Daladans, was awarded a Silver Medal for Classical Contemporary and Composition/Composer in the 2022 Global Music Awards. 

She has served as concertmaster of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie Kammerorchester and the New York String Orchestra, and performed in the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Composers Conferences, as well as at music festivals that include Olympic Music, Tanglewood, Amelia Island, Next Generation, Canberra, Permainu Muzika, American Spring, Music Olomouc, Bowling Green State and Huddersfield, where she gave the UK premiere of David Felder’s Another Face for violin solo with Delcom video walls, and in Nayarit, Mexico at the San Pancho, Chacala and Sinergiarte Music Festivals. She has toured with the New York Philharmonic, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, Erick Hawkins Dance Company, and the Bolshoi Ballet. She was a guest artist with Tatiana Grindenko’s contemporary-music group Opus Posthumous from Moscow, Seattle Chamber Players in their Icebreaker II:  Baltic Voices Festival, and with the Ensemble for the Romantic Century in New York. She premiered the Dance Suite by the Swedish composer Ole Saxe with the Redwood Symphony.

She received a Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham 2008 Interdisciplinary Grant to Individual Artists towards the creation of Quips and Cranks with choreographer Teri Weksler and percussionist John Scalici. She was awarded a grant from the Alabama State Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts for her March 2010 ‘Solo Violin and Alternating Currents’. She launched ‘Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity’ with the New York video artist Sheri Wills in April 2012, which now comprises dozens of videos projected onto and behind the violinist.  With the Paul Dresher Double Duo she toured Australia in May 2013 and has performed with the Paul Dresher Electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 1999.

While residing in Vilnius, Lithuania she first performed the programme ‘Resonances from Vilna’, with the pianist Jascha Nemtsov, in May 2014 and and ‘Nothing is Forever’ with the actor Aiste Ptakauske in December 2015; and she premiered David A. Jaffe’s violin concerto How Did It Get So Late So Soon? with the Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet Theatre Orchestra under Robertas Šervenikas in August 2016.

She received a Seed Money Grant for Disseminated Performances from New York Women Composers towards solo concerts with electronics at the Wayward Music Series in Seattle, the Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics (CCRMA), CINETic and George Enescu Museum in Bucharest, and the Female Composers Festival at SpectrumNYC in spring 2018. She is a founding member of   Virtuosos de Cámara in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico and currently serves as concertmaster of Joy Street Orchestra in Seattle and Principal Second Violin and Festival Artist with the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra in Boulder. She performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860 and a viola made in 1987 by William Whedbee.

Karen performs annually at CCRMA in a variety of works for solo violin or viola with mixed media, electronics and video. Recent concerts there include new works by Lithuanian composers Žibuoklė Martinaitytė and Mantautas Krukauskas; Ukrainian composers Ludmila Yurina, Virko Baley, Valentin Silvestrov, Mykola Kolessa and Myroslav Skoryk on the ‘Homage to Ukraine’ program in September 2022, as well as her own multi media work Paean to St. Francis for voice, violin, electronics and video; and CCRMA resident composers Christopher Jette, Chris Lortie and Constantin Basica.  Her contribution to ‘Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss’ was the Seattle premiere in October 2021 of Pieta by Montana-native composer Jerry Mader, featuring violin and synthesized voices with The Sound Ensemble alongside a performance of ROMANTARCTICA for solo viola & flute with orchestra by Norwegian composer Henning Kraggerud.  She produced a live video of MAQA VIOLIN by Yitzhak Yedid for the Australian Arts Council in December 2021. 

Upcoming recording projects for Toccata Classics include a pairing of violin sonatas by Hermann Graedener and Borys Lyatoshynsky with pianist Timothy Hoft, recorded at University of Nevada Las Vegas in December 2022 with Tonmeister Virko Baley, including his own Partita #3 for violin & piano, and a set of ten Songs Without Words arranged for violin & piano based on original vocal versions to texts by Emily Dickinson.  In spring 2023 Karen will complete a recording of works by Erwin Schulhoff and Ofer Ben-Amots with pianist Debra Ayers and cellist Dennis Parker. A trio of Georgian & Azerbaijani violin concertos by Alexi Machavariani, Azer Rzayev and Rauf Gadjiev will be recorded with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in Kyiv with Conductor John McLaughlin Williams in the offing.

 

REVIEWS

“Throughout the sonata, one hears evidence of the prowess of both the composer-as-pianist, and the pianist-as-composer, given the extremely idiomatic piano writing. What may be less expected is the equally idiomatic violin writing, which is nothing less than stunning, showing off its singing tone, and the instrument’s capability to produce brilliance and power. Karen Bentley, a triple threat on violin, viola, and piano(!), is a superb player on all three instruments, and this sonata could not be in better hands from either performer. Her passion in the very dramatic final movement simply could not be bettered. When I heard her playing, I wondered if she might have studied with Josef Gingold (she demonstrates a certain je ne sais quoi quality) and in reading the notes, discovered that she had, as well as with Camilla Wicks.”

David DeBoor Canfield Fanfare Magazine Issue 44:4 (March/April 2021)

 

“Ivan Sokolov is clearly a composer of astonishing talent whose emotions are displayed in the most powerful and deeply felt ways and I am so glad to have been able to make his musical acquaintance through this marvellous disc. I can only imagine what he can produce in orchestral terms which I am eager to discover. Add to his compositional talents a rich an expressive pianism which this record show in spades. It was a lucky thing for both him and Karen Bentley Pollick to have found each other back in 2004 since when they have developed a close understanding of each other’s musical abilities which further enriches Sokolov’s writing and their playing. As I wrote in the introduction it is unusual on a single disc for a musician to be recorded playing three different instruments as Pollick does and the biographical details in the notes takes over two pages to list all her awards and performance history; she is extraordinarily talented. The sound is exemplary as is to be expected from Toccata Classics and it is to their credit that these works are their first recordings. Thank goodness there are recording companies like them that are not solely motivated by profit for music and composers like Sokolov would certainly be the losers.”

Steve Arloff, MusicWeb International December 2020

“Music doesn’t necessarily have to have been written recently to be new — there’s also a wealth of music from long ago that has been sitting in libraries for centuries, unperformed and unappreciated. I love it when a performer decides to go to bat for a forgotten composer and makes you hear the reason why.

Hermann Grädener was a German composer, violinist and conductor, a decade younger than Brahms (who evidently groused about the younger composer’s lack of productivity). And if you’re as ignorant of his work as I was, conductor Gottfried Rabl and violinist Karen Bentley Pollick are here to enlighten us.

This release — the initial installment of a promised survey of Grädener’s orchestral music — includes his two violin concertos, written in 1890 and 1905, and they’re fine, even irresistible scores. Yes, the influence of Brahms is everywhere, but listen past it to the sense of spaciousness in the opening movement of the First Concerto, or the still-voiced eloquence of the slow movement of the Second. The performers’ advocacy seems entirely well-merited, and the playing backs it up.”

Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle February 26, 2020 

“Both finales are buoyant rondos. That of the First Concerto has plenty of fireworks which Pollick handles gracefully. The finale of the Second Concerto opens dramatically, but soon turns to a more cheerful character, again played with assurance. Pollick plays with an alluring sound and great confidence. Rabl and the Ukrainian orchestra provide a solid background.  There is no question that this is attractive music, skillfully woven together. The recording helps fill in a blank spot in the history of 19^th-century music and is certainly worth enjoying.”

Peter Alexander, Sharps and Flatirons April 11, 2020

“Karen Bentley Pollick is at her very best here, driving eagerly, warmly supported by Rabl and his forces.  There’s even a hint of the toreador about this movement, Grädener’s attempt at a Brahms-like Hungarian finale perhaps, though I suspect Mendelssohn’s shade, too, in the violin’s passagework…With booklet notes and production standards flying high, you can judge for yourself which concerto you prefer in performances that are focused and communicative.”

Jonathan Woolf, Music Web International November 2019

“Violinist Karen Bentley Pollick delivers some fine performances here. Her violin’s warm, clear tone added beauty to the lyrical passages — of which there are many. And she ably handled the technical challenges — especially those of the second concerto.”

Ralph Graves, The Unmutual Blogspot: Finding Beauty in Ephemera November 7, 2019

“Rarely will a recital such as this engage the ear from beginning to end, yet each piece at Birmingham Museum of Art event had a unique style and temperament, reflecting Pollick’s keen sense for gleaning quality in experimental music and giving these scores their rightful due…Pollick not only extended that thread, she vitalized and emboldened it.”

Michael Huebner, Birmingham News March 11, 2010

“Bentley Pollick’s violin playing was nothing short of astonishing, delivering absolute precision with double and triple stops, as well as accented bowed staccati. In the scordatura second movement, she produced low tones of a truly extraordinary timbre.”

Judith Crispin, CityNews, Canberra May 19, 2013

“It’s rare to see the violin and piano played simultaneously – by one person. Karen Bentley Pollick, a violinist, pulled off that exciting feat when she played Dan Tepfer’s “Solo Blues for Violin and Piano” on Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham… Toward the end, she and (Grant) Dalton were able to let loose on a piece called “Salsa for Karen for Violin and Percussion” by Ole Saxe. Pollick clearly has a personal connection with this piece, and she pretty much lit the house on fire with her movements as well as her playing as Dalton kept up the beat. But after having played the piano and violin simultaneously, she deserved to go wild…”

Richard LeComte, Birmingham News May 6, 2008

“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

For more information: www.kbentley.com