Jan Karlin (born 1954) is an American violist, author, arts administrator and record producer, who has won two Grammy Awards. She is the Founding Executive Director of Southwest Chamber Music and has administered many national and international tours, festivals, cultural exchanges and educational programs. [1] [2] Karlin is the author of What's Next? Creativity in the Age of Entertainment, which received a 2020 Book Excellence Award and 2019 Readers’ Favorite International Book Award. [3] [4]
Jan Karlin is the Founding Executive Director of the LA International New Music Festival (2012-), the Summer Festival at The Huntington (1993-2013), and Southwest Chamber Music (1987-). [5] Her book, "What's Next? Creativity in the Age of Entertainment," won a 2020 Book Excellence Award and 2019 Reader's Favorite Award. [3] She has been recognized as an outstanding Executive Director in California by the James Irvine Foundation. [6] Karlin produced the largest cultural exchange in the history of the U.S. and Vietnam, the 2010 Ascending Dragon Music Festival and Cultural Exchange, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. [7] During the Exchange, she presented arts administration workshops at the Vietnam National Academy of Music, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi and the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. [5] The exchange drew international media coverage, including the Vietnam News and TV, CNN International, the LA Times, [8] Harvard Business Review, [9] and The Wall St. Journal . [10] She was appointed Artistic Advisor to the Vietnam National Academy of Music and the Hanoi New Music Ensemble following the exchange. Karlin produced other tours for Southwest including the first American ensemble appearance at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, Austria, as well as appearances at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., [11] and New York’s Cooper Union. [12] Other ensemble tours produced by Karlin have included an NEA/LA Cultural Affairs sponsored appearance at Mexico’s 2009 Guadalajara FIL Festival, five concerts at UNAM in Mexico City in 2006, a concert for the 2006 World Culture Expo at the Temples of Angkor in Cambodia, as well as concerts at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh and the Hanoi Opera House, Vietnam. [13] In southern California she produced three years of 26-week statewide radio broadcasts for Southwest Chamber Music and oversaw development and marketing with eight other organizations for the Radical Past and Universe Festivals. [14] Karlin developed and administers educational programs in Los Angeles County including a Mentorship Program for junior and senior high school students, Music Unwrapped free community concerts, and Project Muse in-school concerts. [15]
As a violist, she has performed worldwide in the U. S., Europe, Mexico, and Asia, as a member of the Wiener Akademie in Vienna and Southwest Chamber Music. [16] Karlin performed three cycles of the complete Beethoven String Quartets with the Southwest String Quartet. [17] She performed on Southwest Chamber Music’s Complete Chamber Works of Carlos Chávez, Volumes 1 and 2, [18] which received 2003 and 2004 Grammy Awards. [19] Her recordings are available on Novalis, ORFEO (Munich), and Cambria Master Recordings. [18] Karlin won two Grammy Awards in 2003 and 2004 as the producer for the "Complete Chamber Music of Carlos Chavez, Volumes 1 and 2", received seven Grammy Award nominations, and two additional Latin Grammy Award nominations as producer in 2011 and 2013. [1]
Karlin earned a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude with a double major in drama and music from Tufts University. [20] As a viola student and graduate assistant of violist Walter Trampler, she received a Master of Music degree from Boston University. [21] Karlin also studied chamber music with Eugene Lehner and attended the Music Academy of the West. [22] While a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, she performed under conductors including Seiji Ozawa, Gunther Schuller, Oliver Knussen and Leonard Bernstein. [23] In Los Angeles, she taught at Pomona College at Claremont University and was a member of the Long Beach and Pacific Symphony Orchestras; in Boston,. Karlin performed with the Boston Pops, the Opera Company of Boston under Sarah Caldwell, and was a founding member of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra. [24]
John Harris Harbison is an American composer and academic.
The Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI) is a summer music training program for students age 10 to 20 in Lenox, Massachusetts, under the auspices of the Boston University College of Fine Arts.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and University Professor of Composition in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where she is also director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition.
William Edward Childs is an American composer, jazz pianist, arranger and conductor from Los Angeles, California, United States.
The Pacifica Quartet is a professional string quartet based in Bloomington, Indiana. Its members are: Simin Ganatra, first violin; Austin Hartman, second violin; Mark Holloway, viola; and Brandon Vamos, cello. Formed in 1994 by Ganatra and Vamos with violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson and violist Kathryn Lockwood, the group won prizes in competitions such as the 1996 Coleman Chamber Music Competition, the 1997 Concert Artists Guild Competition, and the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Competition. In 2001, violist Masumi Per Rostad replaced Lockwood. The group subsequently received Chamber Music America's prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award in 2002, the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006, and was named "Ensemble of the Year" by Musical America in 2009. In 2017, violinist Austin Hartman replaced Bernhardsson and violist Guy Ben-Ziony replaced Rostad.
Serouj Kradjian is a Canadian Grammy-nominated and Juno-winning pianist and composer.
Peter Wentworth Bucknell is a filmmaker, author and classical violist residing in Barcelona.
Steven A. Ansell is an American violist whose career involves work as a chamber musician, solo artist, and orchestral musician. He is the principal violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held since September 1996. Prior to his appointment, Ansell had already appeared with the orchestra as a guest soloist. He also teaches at the Boston University College of Fine Arts and is a member of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players. He is a founding member of the Muir String Quartet.
Southwest Chamber Music is a chamber music ensemble based in Los Angeles County, California. The organization was founded in 1987 by the artistic director Jeff von der Schmidt and the executive director Jan Karlin. One of the most active chamber music ensembles in the United States, the ensemble performs year round, provides educational programs, tours internationally, and has recorded 30 compact discs.
Sharon Hall Robinson is an American cellist. She has had a highly successful performing career, both as a concert solo artist and as a member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, and has recorded extensively.
Gabriela Lena Frank is an American pianist and composer of contemporary classical music.
Boston Baroque is the oldest period instrument orchestra in North America. It was founded in 1973 by the American harpsichordist and conductor, Martin Pearlman, to present concerts of the Baroque and Classical repertoire on period instruments, drawing on the insights of the historical performance movement.
David Eaton is an American composer and conductor who has been the music director of the New York City Symphony since 1985. He has also been an active composer and arranger, with 101 original compositions and over 900 arrangements and original songs to his credit. He has appeared as a guest conductor with orchestras in Asia, Canada, Israel, Europe, Central and South America, Russia, Ukraine and the United States. His compositions and arrangements have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the United Nations and by orchestras in the United States, Asia, Israel, South America and Europe. He also served at the conductor of the historic Goldman Band from 1998 to 2000 conducting the ensemble in concerts throughout the New York metropolitan area including performances at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. From 2018 to 2024 we was the principal conductor of the Hyo Jeong Youth Orchestra in South Korea. In 2022 he self-published his first book, What Music Tells Me: Beauty, Truth and Goodness and Our Cultural Inheritance.
David Alan Miller is a multi-Grammy Award-winning American symphony orchestra conductor, and since 1992, music director of the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Miller served as assistant and associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1987–92 and music director of the New York Youth Symphony from 1982-88. He is currently also Artistic Advisor to both the Sarasota Orchestra and to The Little Orchestra Society in New York City.
Harlem Quartet is a string quartet that was originally composed of first-place laureates of the Sphinx Competition for Black and Latino string players. They were formed in 2006. The members are first violinist Ilmar Gavilán, second violinist Melissa White, violist Jaime Amador, and cellist Felix Umansky. The Quartet won Best Instrumental Composition at the 2013 Grammy Awards for Mozart Goes Dancing.
The Cassatt String Quartet was founded in 1985. Originally the first participants in Juilliard's Young Artists Quartet Program, the Quartet has gone on to win many teaching fellowships and awards and has toured internationally. Named after impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the quartet is based in New York City.
The Missouri Chamber Music Festival and Adult Chamber Music Intensive (ACMI) was founded in 2010. The goal of the MOCM Festival concerts is to present the fine art of small ensemble music to a wide audience through an accessible, community-based festival. The ACMI workshop is the educational portion of the festival, placing adult instrumentalists in chamber ensembles with Festival artists for coaching and performance.
Jeff von der Schmidt is a Grammy Award-winning American conductor. He is the founding Artistic Director of Southwest Chamber Music and the Los Angeles International New Music Festival.
Stanley Silverman is an American composer, arranger, conductor and guitarist.
Lynn Vartan is an American percussionist. She began performing as a child in Fresno, California. Her principal instrument is the marimba.