Jennifer Curtis, violin
Dynamic violinist Jennifer Curtis appears regularly as featured soloist and as collaborative chamber musician across the United States and abroad. Also an accomplished composer, her compositions have been performed in New York City, at The Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondiin Italy, and at the Verbier Festival de Musique in Switzerland, among others. Capturing first prize wins at concerto competitions associated with The Juilliard School and The University of California, a recipient of an award from The California Music Federations’ Competition for Soloists, and winner of Mills College’s Martha Friedberger Cupfor most outstanding music graduate, Ms. Curtis has also won Astral Artistic Services’ 2006 nationwide auditions, and is the recipient of the inaugural Milka/Astral Violin Prize designated for a violinist invited to join Astral’s roster . In addition, she was recently presented by Artists Internationalin her New York City Carnegie Hall recital debut, about which her interpretations were described as “inventive” and “fascinating” by The New York Concert Review. The New York Times recognized Ms. Curtis’ “fine solos” after her leadership of the Juilliard Orchestra in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which was performed in New York City’s Avery Fisher Hall in November of 2004. Upcoming concerto engagements for Ms. Curtis include appearances with The Haddonfield Symphony at The Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, with The Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Venezuela, and at The University of North Carolina’s Festival on the Hill, where she will perform Paul Desenne’s The Two Seasonsas part of the festival’s Modern Music of Latin America series. As a recitalist, this season Ms. Curtis will be presented by Astral in her Philadelphia debut, and will appear at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City. She will also make chamber music appearances during Mexico’s Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea, the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center and at France’s Musique de Chambrea Giverny during the summer of 2007.
In past seasons, Ms. Curtis has collaborated and performed with esteemed artists Bonnie Hampton, Paul Katz, Nicholas Mann, Robert Mann, and conductor James Judd. She has been invited on numerous occasions to record, perform, and tour with many New Yorkbased ensembles, including Continuum, with whom she performed at the Ilkhom Festival of Contemporary Musicin Tashkent, Uzbekistan, The Argento Chamber Ensemble, The Momenta Quartet, and The Mark Morris Dance Group, beginning next season, she will also perform as a permanent member of The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) . She possesses an avid interest in music of all kinds, and has performed new works by composers Virko Baley, Fred Lerhdal, and Tristan Murail, in addition to her New York City concerto debut, which featured her solo performance of Dutilleux’s L’Arbre des Songesin 2004 with The Juilliard Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall. She has worked closely with composer Lou Harrison on his Philemon and Baukis, a work scored for solo violin and gamelan, which she performed at gamelan festivals throughout the west coast, and was also invited to perform Harrison’s Concerto for Violin, Percussion, and Celesteat the 2003 FOCUS!Festival at Lincoln Center. She is a proficient mandolin player in addition, and has been recently featured on the instrument in many different virtuosic genres; she has been engaged to perform original, traditional, and orchestral mandolin compositions, as well as to perform solo mandolin roles in various professional opera productions in New York City, including Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and La Rossignole. Ms. Curtis has studied West African, Haitian, and Afro-Cuban percussion, and has traveled worldwide in an effort to expand her understanding of artistry and expression by experiencing the music of many different cultures.
To this end, Ms. Curtis is the founder and director of Tres Americas Project, a non-profit, community-focused exploration of the musical traditions of the Americas. Performing original, traditional, and classical repertoire, TAP is dedicated to expanding the boundaries of the aesthetics of music performance and to creating alternative performance venues. Ms. Curtis holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Mills College in California, where she studied with David Abel and a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School, where she was a student of Robert Mann.
