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 Norwegian Hardanger fiddle(hardingfele) 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. She then studied violin with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco, performing in master-classes of Nathan Milstein in Zurich, Jean-Jacques Kantorow in Victoria, British Columbia, and Glenn Dicterow in Carmel, California, and with Yuval Yaron, Josef Gingold and Rostislav Dubinsky at Indiana University, where she received both Bachelors and Masters of Music Degrees in Violin Performance with a cognate in Choral Conducting. 

Concertmaster of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie Kammerorchester and the New York String Orchestra, Karen has also participated in the ‘June in Buffalo’ and Wellesley Composers’ Conferences, as well as music festivals including Olympic Music, Tanglewood, Amelia Island, Next Generation, Canberra, Permainu Muzika and Bowling Green State Contemporary Music Festivals. She 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. She was a guest artist with the contemporary-music group Opus Posthumous from Moscow, Seattle Chamber Players in their festival ‘Icebreaker II:  Baltic Voices’ and Ensemble for the Romantic Century in New York. 

Her recordings of original music include 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 music featuring chamber works by Russian pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov on <amberwood>, Homage to Fiddlers & Russian Soulscapes; solo violin music of Swedish composer Ole Saxe on Dancing Suite to Suite & Peace Piece; and filmed Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for violin and piano for one performer simultaneously.  She has also recorded for CRI, Sony, RCA and Camel Productions, as well as the Bridge, Albany, Mode, Numinous, Innova, Tzadik, NEOS, Toccata Classics, Blue Coast Records and Lithuanian Music Center labels.

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 music festivals including 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 Ensemble for the Romantic Century in New York and was Principal Second Violin and Festival Artist with the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra in Boulder. She currently serves as concertmaster of Joy Street Orchestra in Seattle. She performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860 and a viola made in 1987 by William Whedbee.

She premiered Dance Suite by the Swedish composer Ole Saxe with the Redwood Symphony and has performed concertos with the Alabama Symphony and with orchestras in Alaska, California, New York, Panama, Lithuania, Russian and Ukraine. She has presented recitals with Ivan Sokolov at the American Academy of Rome, in Alabama, Louisiana and Colorado, and in Seattle and New York City, and throughout the Czech Republic; with the cellist Dennis Parker at the American Spring Festival in Brno; and in England at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, where she gave the UK premiere of David Felder’s Another Face for violin solo with Delcom video walls. Along with choreographer Teri Weksler and percussionist John Scalici, she received a Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham 2008 Interdisciplinary Grant to Individual Artists towards the creation of Quips and Cranks. Karen was awarded a grant from the Alabama State Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts for her concerts in March 2010 under the title ‘Solo Violin and Alternating Currents’, which included the premiere of Metaman by Charles Norman Mason in Birmingham, Seattle and at Music Olomouc 2011. She launched ‘Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity’ with the New York video artist Sheri Wills in April 2012 at Evergroove Studio and has since performed the program featuring dozens of videos projected onto the violinist in Brooklyn, Seattle, Colorado Springs, Klaipeda, New York, Bucharest and Stanford. Karen received a Seed Money Grant for Disseminated Performances from New York Women Composers towards solo concerts with electronics at Wayward Music Series in Seattle, Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics, CINETic and George Enescu Museum in Bucharest, and Female Composers Festival at SPECTRUMNYC in spring 2018. With the Paul Dresher Double Duo she toured Australia in May 2013 and the USA in autumn 2014, and has performed with the Paul Dresher Electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 1999. 

In May 2014, while she was residing in Vilnius, Lithuania she gave the first performance of a recital program called ‘Resonances from Vilna’ with the pianist Jascha Nemtsov and, in December 2015 that of ‘Nothing is Forever’ with actor Aiste Ptakauske; and in August 2016 she premiered David A. Jaffe’s violin concerto How Did It Get So Late So Soon? with the Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet Theatre Orchestra conducted by Maestro Robertas Šervenikas.

Her recordings of original music include the independent releases 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 chamber music by the Russian pianist-composer Ivan Sokolov on <amberwood>, Homage to Fiddlers and Russian Soulscapes; music of Ole Saxe on Peace Piece and, coupled with that of Bach on Dancing Suite to Suite; Bebop for Beagles featured music by Benedikt Brydern and Estadio for Viola that of Greg Simon; and she also filmed Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for Violin and Piano. 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. 

Her first recording for Toccata Classics featured the two violin concertos of Hermann Grädener (tocc 0529) and was universally well received, garnering a Silver Medal in the 2019 Global Music Awards for Oustanding Achievement in Album and Instrumental Solo Performance: ‘Karen Bentley Pollick is at her very best here’, the reviewer for MusicWeb International reported; and Fanfare judged that ‘violinist Pollick plays with rare purity and radiance of tone, and with deep concentration of emotional expression’. Her second recording for Toccata Classics presents duos for violin, viola and piano of Russian pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov (tocc0560) and was awarded a  Gold Medal for Composer in the 2020 Global Music Awards.  ‘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.’ Fanfare    ‘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.’ MusicWeb International

Her third recording for Toccata Classics ‘Music for Emily Dickinson’ presents music by Ukrainian-American composer Virko Baley with pianist Timothy Hoft and soprano Lucy Shelton and was awarded the 2024 American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music.

While residing in Mexico, Karen performed at San Pancho, Chacala, and Sinergiarte Music Festivals in the state of Nayarit, and was a founding member of Virtuosos de Camara in Puerto Vallarta. She debuted with Peruvian guitarist Alfredo Duo in Duo KarMu in Guanajuato and San Miguel in 2019.

Karen continues her 25-year collaboration with harpsichordist Jonathan Salzedo in the San Francisco Bay Area since co-directing the annual Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra ‘Bach Celebration Concerts’ in Portola Valley for several seasons in March. With Don Slepian and Stuart Diamond, she also joins the New York-based group Electric Diamond, merging live video and multi-media performances with electro-acoustic improvisations with recent performances at EMEAPP in Harleysville, Pennsylvania and at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles.

Karen has performed often at the Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics in a variety of works for solo violin or viola with mixed media, electronics and video. Featured composers on her programs have included new works by Lithuanian composers Žibuoklė Martinaitytė   and Mantautas Krukauskas, Ukrainian composer Ludmila Yurina, Christopher Jette,   Chris Lortie, Constantin Basica, Nina C. Young and David A. Jaffe. She collaborated with the Paul Dresher Ensemble and vocalist Amy X Neuburg in a project entitled ‘They Will Have Been So Beautiful: Songs and Images of Now’. Her contribution to ‘Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss’ in October 2021 was the premiere of Pietà by Montana-native composer Jerry Mader, featuring violin and synthesized voices along with a performance of ROMANTARCTICA by Henning Kraggerud. She filmed a live video of MAQA VIOLIN by Yitzhak Yedid for the Australian Arts Council in San Pancho, Nayarit in December 2021. She presented ‘Homage to Ukraine’ with music by Ukrainian composers Ludmila Yurina and Virko Baley at Stanford University’s CCRMA in September 2022 and launched Music for Emily Dickinson with pianist Timothy Hoft at University of Nevada Doc Rando Recital Hall on August 31, 2023.

Karen tracked the hardangerfele solos in her San Pancho home studio for New Zealand composer Stephen Gallagher’s score for Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, released in December 2024. 

Upcoming release on Toccata Classics ‘Concertos from the Caucasus’ presents a trio of violin concertos by Georgian composer Alexi Machavariani, and Azerbaijani composers Azer Rzayev and Rauf Gadjiev, recorded with Maestro John McLaughlin Williams and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra in October 2024.

 

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