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Lara St. John

Canadian-born violinist Lara St. John has been described as “something of a phenomenon” by The Strad and a “high-powered soloist” by The New York Times.

She has performed as soloist with the orchestras of Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, the Boston Pops, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, NDR Symphony, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Strasbourg Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, Camerata Ireland, Belgrade Symphony, Amsterdam Symphony, and the Akbank Chamber Orchestra in Turkey, among others.

Lara has also performed with the Queensland Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony, ACO², Auckland Philharmonia, Tokyo Symphony, Kyoto Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, China Philharmonic, Hangzhou Symphony and Shanghai Symphony.

She has traveled to Latin America for appearances with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, the São Paulo Symphony, Rio de Janeiro’s Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira, Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Ecuador, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, the SODRE in Montevideo, and the Sociedad Filarmónica de Lima in Peru.

Recitals in major concert halls have included New York, Boston, San Francisco, Ravinia, Wolf Trap, Washington, D.C., Prague, Berlin, Toronto, Montreal, Bogotá, Lima and the Forbidden City. Lara has commissioned or premiered new works by an array of prominent composers, including Matthew Hindson, Martin Kennedy, John Corigliano, Gene Pritsker, Serouj Kradjian, Tarik O’Regan and John Psathas.

Upcoming performances will include the Filarmónica de Buenos Aires, the Estonian National Symphony and the Royal Conservatory in Toronto.

The Los Angeles Times wrote, “Lara St. John happens to be a volcanic violinist with a huge, fabulous tone that pours out of her like molten lava. She has technique to burn and plays at a constant high heat.”

Lara owns and runs her own label, Ancalagon, which she founded in 1999. Her recording of Bach: The Six Sonatas & Partitas for Violin Solo was the best-selling double album on iTunes in 2007. Her 2008 world premiere recording of Matthew Hindson’s Violin Concerto prompted Gramophone to write, “It’s the sort of work that should get audiences running, not walking, back to concert halls on new-music nights.”

In 2009, American Record Guide said of her Vivaldi/Piazzolla disc with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra: “I can imagine no suaver, more atmospheric performance.” Her Mozart recording with The Knights won a Juno Award in 2011.

In 2014, her Schubert album with Berlin Philharmonic principal harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet, principal cellist Ludwig Quandt and soprano Anna Prohaska was chosen as one of “the best CDs of spring” by Der Tagsesspiegel, and MDR Figaro recommended it for its “boundless enchantment.”

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3
Album Review

Lara St. John: Key of A | Beethoven Sonata #9 / Franck Sonata

Read "Key of A | Beethoven Sonata #9 / Franck Sonata" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


It is always a worthy question to ask when a pairing like Beethoven's notorious “Kreutzer" sonata with Franck's frankly demonic violin sonata, not to mention the inspired inclusion of Kreisler's “Schön Rosmarin," thrown in for giggles, is released. There is clever reasoning to programming both sonatas on the same disc and it is not simply that they were both composed in the key of A Major (though one could argue that the Beethoven orbits closer to A minor). There is ...

5
Album Review

Lara St. John: Shiksa

Read "Shiksa" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


..."all this music from different countries and cultures pulled together and recorded by a random Canadian chick." And that is the charm of Lara St. John. One-time enfant terrible violinist Lara St. John has morphed into a beautifully iconoclastic and enigmatic cultural presence in the staid world of classical music. Things started off innocently enough with Bach. St. John made her way through three Bach-oriented recordings (Bach Works for Violin Solo (Well- Tempered, 1996), ...

78
Album Review

Lara St. John and Marie-Pierre Langlamet: Bach Sonatas

Read "Bach Sonatas" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Can classical music performance be controversial? Most often, this is true only when a performance departs from contemporary (or not-so-contemporary) conventional wisdom, which often relies on both a uniform and blinding reverence to how “things ought to be." Every composer who ever put pen to parchment may have designated a specific instrument in a given piece, but that does not preclude the possibility of a different instrument playing that same piece. In fact, this is exactly how the composers of ...

460
Album Review

Lara St. John, The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, Eduardo Marturet: Vivaldi: The Four Seasons / Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires

Read "Vivaldi: The Four Seasons / Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Canadian cum American violinist Lara St. John is a classical maverick without peer. The scintillating Bach of her youth, Bach: Works for Solo Violin (Well Tempered Productions, 1996), gave way a decade later to her fully mature Bach of The Six Sonatas & Partitas for Violin Solo (Ancalagon, 2007), and then to diamond-splendid Hindson, Corigliano, and Liszt (Hindson: Violin Concerto; Corigliano: Suite from the Red Violin, Ancalagon, 2008). A creatively restless spirit, St. John returns to the fold with a ...

471
Album Review

Lara St. John / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sarah Ioannides: Hindson, Corigliano, Liszt/Kennedy/St. John

Read "Hindson, Corigliano, Liszt/Kennedy/St. John" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


After culminating a ten-year romance with Bach, Canadian violinist Lara St. John has turned her attention to more modern fare. Not content to record another “Tchaik/Sib or Bruch/Mendelssohn," St. John has elected to debut a violin concerto by Australian composer Matthew Hindson, reinterpret John Corigliano's score for The Red Violin (1998) and put on her violin spin of Franz Liszt's “Totentanz." With this recording, St. John establishes herself firmly in the past and present, on her own terms, and with ...

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Performance / Tour

Gene Pritsker's Sound Liberation Feat. Lara St. John At Joe's Pub Saturday, March 9, 2024

Gene Pritsker's Sound Liberation Feat. Lara St. John At Joe's Pub Saturday, March 9, 2024

Source: Robert C. Ford

On March 9th at 7pm (doors open 6pm), Joe's Pub and Composers Concordance present “Vivaldi's Hot House." This composition by Gene Pritsker (Matrix Resurrections, Joe Zawinul) is a starting point for this eclectic event with violin doyenne Lara St. John and Pritsker's ensemble Sound Liberation. The concert will feature a genre defying repertoire of music inspired by various composers from the past including Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mozart, reinterpreted with jazz, metal, hip-hop, etc. Featured singers include soprano Adriana Valdes, baritone ...

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