Jennifer Koh: Bach and Beyond

Born in Chicago of Korean parents, Ms. Koh began playing the violin by chance, choosing the instrument in a Suzuki-method program only because spaces for cello and piano had been filled. She made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. She has been honored as “A Force of Nature” by the American Composers Orchestra and Musical America’s 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year. Ms. Koh was a top prize winner at Moscow’s International Tchaikovsky Competition, winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Koh performs a special program for UMass of her popular Bach and Beyond series, which traces the history of the solo violin repertoire from Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas to 20th- and 21st-century composers, featuring new commissions by leading Asian American composers Vijay Iyer, Nina Shekhar, Anjna Swaminathan, and Ken Ueno.

Ms. Koh is the Founder and Artistic Director of arco collaborative, an artist-driven nonprofit that fosters a better understanding of our world through a musical dialogue inspired by ideas and the communities around us. The organization supports artistic collaborations and commissions, transforming the creative process by engaging with specific ideas and perspectives, investing in the future by cultivating artist-citizens in partnership with educational organizations. Ms. Koh is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Foundation for the Advancement for the Arts, a scholarship program for high school students in the arts.

Ms. Koh is a participant of our Fine Arts Center online conversation Codemakers: Jennifer Koh, Davóne Tines, Ken Ueno, and Kee-Yoon Nahme, to be held on Thursday, September 30, 2021 - 7:00 p.m. ET as part of our Asian and Asian American Arts and Culture Program. The participants will discuss their experiences and challenges as Asian American and African American artists, and their new anti-racist performance collaboration, Everything That Rises Must Converge.