Born: July 5, 1970 Primary Instrument: Viola
Born in Fort McMurray, Alberta, violist and violinist Tanya Kalmanovitch now lives in the spaces between modern jazz, classical music and free improvisation. Actively performing in New York City since 2004, she has been named “Best New Talent” by All About Jazz New York, while Time Out New York identified her from a small pool of suspects as “the Juilliard-trained violist who’s been tearing up the scene”.
Tanya’s debut recording with her quartet Hut Five was hailed by the Montreal Gazette as “an exceptional recording, one of the more engaging recordings heard in some time” and was garnished with a number of stars by DownBeat magazine. Her latest recording, Heart Mountain, with pianist Myra Melford, will be released in May 2007.
Tanya has performed in Europe and North America with a diverse range of artists including Mark Turner, Benoît Delbecq, Mark Helias, Dominique Pifarély, Andy Laster, Tom Rainey, Ernst Reijseger, Mat Maneri, and the Turtle Island String Quartet, Martin Hayes, John Cage and Shujaat Husain Khan. She has travelled frequently to India where she has studied Karnatic music with violinist Lalgudi G. J. R. Krishnan and veena player Karaikudi S. Subramanian while conducting doctoral dissertation research on jazz exotica.
Tanya teaches regularly at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London UK and the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag NL, and is a member of the faculty of the department of Creative Improvisation at Boston’s New England Conservatory. She frequently presents workshops on improvisation for string players, classical musicians, jazz musicians, and musicians in general in the Netherlands, Ireland, the United States, and the Czech Republic.
She is a founding member of the Brooklyn Jazz Underground, a collective of ten independent bandleaders based in New York City. She is also the Canadian representative to the International Association of Schools of Jazz, a founding member of the Jazz String Caucus of the International Association for Jazz Education, and a mentor to the Sisters in Jazz Program.
Primary Instrument:
Viola
Location:
New York, NY
Willing to teach:
Beginners
Credentials/Background:
Tanya Kalmanovitch is Assistant Chair of the department of
Creative
Improvisation at New England Conservatory in Boston MA
and a regular
instructor at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag NL
and the summer
school of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in
London UK, where she
has pioneered creative improvisation programs for classical
musicians.
Central to her teaching philosophy is a belief that all
musicians, regardless of
genre, should possess the means to creative self-
expression and professional
development.
Tanya has played a leading role in developing
improvisational pedagogy for
string players and creative musicians. She is a founding
board member of the
Jazz String Caucus of the International Association for Jazz
Education, has
served as a member of the 2007 Alternative Styles
committee of the American
String Teachers Association, and is the Canadian
representative to the
International Association of Schools of Jazz. In addition to
her regular
teaching commitments in Boston and Den Haag, Tanya
frequently presents
workshops and residencies internationally, and offers
private and small group
instruction for musicians of all levels in New York City.
As an educator, Tanya aims to provide students with the
tools necessary to
reach a full expression of their unique creative voices.
Blending pedagogical
approaches from contemporary jazz, free improvisation with
critical inquiry
into the social construction of musical communities, she
aims to provide
performers with the necessary technical, aesthetic, critical
and practical tools
for lifelong artistic careers.
