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Kim Kashkashian

Kim Kashkashian, internationally recognized as a unique voice on the viola, was born of Armenian parents in Michigan. She studied the viola with Karen Tuttle and legendary violist Walter Trampler at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. Since fall 2000 she has taught viola and chamber music at New England Conservatory.

Following Grammy Award nominations for several previous recordings, Kashkashian received a 2012 Grammy Award in the "Best Classical Instrumental Solo" category for Kurtág and Ligeti: Music for Viola, on the ECM Records label. Kashkashian's recording, with Robert Levin, of the Brahms Sonatas won the Edison Prize in 1999. Her June 2000 recording of concertos by Bartók, Eötvös and Kurtág won the 2001 Cannes Classical Award for a premiere recording by soloist with orchestra.

In 2016, Kashkashian was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Kashkashian has worked tirelessly to broaden the range of technique, advocacy, and repertoire for the viola. A staunch proponent of contemporary music, she has developed creative relationships with György Kurtág, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, Giya Kancheli, and Arvo Pärt, and commissioned works from Peter Eötvös, Ken Ueno, Thomas Larcher, Lera Auerbach, and Tigran Mansurian.

Marlboro and the Viennese school represented by her mentor, Felix Galimir, were major influences in developing her love of chamber music. Kim Kashkashian is a regular participant at the Verbier, Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Marlboro, and Ravinia festivals.

She has long-standing duo partnerships with pianist Robert Levin and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky, and played in a unique string quartet with Gidon Kremer, Daniel Phillips, and Yo-Yo Ma.

As a soloist, she has appeared with the great orchestras of Berlin, London, Vienna, Milan, New York, and Cleveland, and in recital at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Kaufmann Hall, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, as well as in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, Athens, and Tokyo.

Kashkashian's musicianship has been well represented on recordings through her association with the prestigious ECM label in a fruitful collaboration that has been continuous since 1985.

Kim Kashkashian has taught in Bloomington, Indiana, and in Freiburg and Berlin, Germany, and now resides with her daughter in Boston.

Kim is a founding member of Music for Food, an initiative by musicians to fight hunger in their home communities.

B.M., Peabody Conservatory of Music; M.M., New School of Music Philadelphia. Viola with Walter Trampler and Karen Tuttle. Former faculty of University of Indiana and conservatories in Freiburg and Berlin, Germany.


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2
Album Review

Kim Kashkashian Sarah Rothenberg Steven Schick Houston Chamber Choir Robert Simpson.: Rothko Chapel

Read "Rothko Chapel" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


On ECM's superb and captivating Rothko Chapel an elite group of musicians interprets Morton Feldman's sublime title piece and several others by John Cage and, the father of western musical modernism, Erik Satie. The disc explores the common conceptual and stylistic threads between the Feldman and Cage's works and their origins in Satie's oeuvre. Although Feldman's composition is not recorded in the Chapel itself the ambience is evocative of the physical building itself. The spiritual sanctuary and painter ...

2
Album Review

Kim Kashkashian: Kurtag/Ligeti: Music for Viola

Read "Kurtag/Ligeti: Music for Viola" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian


There are more jokes about the viola, perhaps, than any other member of the violin family, but there are also exquisitely written pieces of music that in the hands of virtuosos come alive with vivid emotion and erudite articulation. Boston-based Kim Kashkashian is one of the premier violists in the world and has recorded many fine, edgy and stimulating albums. With Kurtág/Ligeti: Music for Viola, she tackles two of the more challenging composers of the last half ...

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Album Review

Kim Kashkashian / Robert Levin: Asturiana: Songs from Spain and Argentina

Read "Asturiana: Songs from Spain and Argentina" reviewed by John Kelman


It's curious that, of the instruments in the classical string quartet, the viola is the least often heard as a leading voice. Richer and deeper-toned than the violin, but higher in range than the cello, it's the ideal instrument to interpret material written for voice. Violist Kim Kashkashian has, since the mid-1980s, been a fixture on ECM's New Series which, parallel to its regular series, focuses on music that is composed rather than improvised. Her relationship with pianist Robert Levin ...

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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Rothko Chapel

ECM Records
2015

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Neharot

ECM Records
2009

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Asturiana

ECM Records
2008

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