Kwak, Sarah

She is a violinist born in Boston, Massachusetts who was raised in Lawrence, Kansas who went to Austria to study at Vienna’s Hochschule fur Musik for a short period before returning to the USA and becoming a student at the Curtis Institute of Music when she was 12 years old.

In 1989 she won the WAMSO Young Artist Competition and is the first artist at the Washington International Competition to win all three memorial awards. She has also been awarded a McKnight Artist Fellowship.

In 1988 she was appointed first Association Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra and remain in that position until she becam Acting Concertmaster from 2010 to 2012. She left the orchestra in 2012 when she took the position of Concertmaster with the Oregon Symphony.

As a soloist she has given performances with many orchestras that include the Curtis Chamber Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra and was a soloist on the Oregon Symphony’s Haydn & Strauss: Austrian Music through the Ages.

As a chamber musician she is a founding member of the Rosalyra String Quartet which debuted in New York in 1996 and has toured internationally with the Casa Verde Trio and in the United States with the Musicians from Marlboro. A regular participant in music festivals she has taken part in the Chamber Music of Northwest Festivel, the Marlboro Music Festival, the Northwest Winter Festival, the Portland Piano International Summer Festival along with many others and was appointed Concertmaster of the Oregon Bach Festival in 2014.

As a guest musician she has been Concertmaster with the Utah Symphony and toured with the Asia Philharmonic Orchestra.

Recordings she has performed on include Solo Settings by Charles Lazarus, Jean Sibelius: The Seven Symphonies, Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 and Sibelius: Symphonies No. 2 & 5 by the Minnesota Orchestra, Gospel Christmas by the Northwest Community Gospel Chorus and Oregon Symphony, Get Happy and Besame Mucho by Pink Martini and Schoenberg: Serenade Op. 24; Chamber Symphony No. 2 Op. 9 and Kalevi Aho: Quintet for Clarinet & Strings; Trio for Clarinet Viola & Piano; Sonata for Two Accordions by various artists.

In the field of musical education she has been a faculty member of the University of Nevada at Reno and Princeton University. She is the Executive Director and a founding member of the non-profit organisation Classical Up Close which gives free chamber music concerts in metro area neighbourhoods to make classical music accessible.

Her husband is the violinist Vali Phillips who also plays for the Oregon Symphony after leaving the Minnesota Orchestra.

Sources:

Kwak, Sarah

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