About the Artist

Violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron is rapidly garnering acclaim for her perceptive and elegant interpretations as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. Lauded by the New York Times as a “brilliant soloist” she has appeared internationally in such venues as London's Cadogan Hall, the Salle Gaveau, the Seoul Arts Center, Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and Zankel Hall. Based in New York, Ms. Gendron is a member of the distinguished conductor-less Sejong Soloists and the Momenta Quartet, recipients of the prestigious Koussevitzky Music Foundation commission grant and a rising star on New York's contemporary music scene. Other commitments include a collaboration with pianist Yelena Grinberg as the G-Sharp Duo; the emerging Toomai String Quintet, currently on the roster of Carnegie Hall's Musical Connections outreach program; and ongoing appearances with the Marlboro Music Festival and the Musicians From Marlboro tours.

Ms. Gendron's debut performance at the Louvre was praised by critics for its "excellent technical mastery", "sensual sound", and "undeniable sensitivity" (ClassiqueInfo). Other solo highlights have included an appearance in Avery Fisher Hall with the Juilliard Orchestra under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies as well as private recitals given under the auspices of the Stradivari Society and the Salon de Virtuosi. Ms. Gendron’s performances have been broadcast over radio and television in the U.S., U.K., Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Japan, and Korea. Especially notable is her solo performance with Sejong Soloists on the popular KBS arts program “Classical Odyssey," which was aired across South Korea in 2009. She can be heard as a featured soloist in Piazzolla's Four Seasons on “Passion,” Sejong’s latest CD on the Universal label, and has recorded the Mendelssohn Octet with violinist Gil Shaham for Canary Classics.

Ms. Gendron’s versatility is reflected both by the scope of her performing interests and by the exceptional diversity of her repertoire. A committed advocate for new music, she has worked with living composers as eminent and diverse as Samuel Adler, Gordon Beeferman, John Corigliano, Richard Danielpour, Matthew Greenbaum, Jay Greenberg, Arthur Kampela, Aaron Jay Kernis, Philip Lasser, Hiroya Miura, Behzad Ranjbaran, Roger Reynolds, and Elliott Sharp; appearing in such noted New York venues as Miller Theatre, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Summergarden at MoMA, Serial Underground at the Cornelia Street Café, Roulette, the Tenri Institute, ISSUE Project Room, and the Stone. She was a founding member of the Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble and has taken part in several landmark premieres--among them the highly acclaimed New York premiere of Roger Reynolds' "Aspiration", a violin concerto in five movements, at the 2009 FOCUS! festival. Ms. Gendron's most demanding undertaking to date is with the Momenta Quartet in Arthur Kampela's Uma Faca Só Lâmina ("A Knife All Blade", 1998), which received its long-awaited world premiere in February of 2010.

Ms. Gendron has enjoyed success in several major competitions, most recently winning 2nd Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2009 Sion-Valais (formerly Tibor Varga) International Violin Competition. She is also a past winner of the Stulberg International String Competition. Other awards include the Milan Vitek Special Prize at the 2008 Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition, as well as reaching the finals of the Concert Artists Guild International Competition that same year as one of just two violinists.

Born in the U.S. in 1984 to Japanese and French-Canadian parents, Ms. Gendron began her violin studies at age four with Carl Shugart. She was trained chiefly at the Juilliard School where her principal teachers were Won-Bin Yim, Dorothy DeLay, David Chan, and Hyo Kang. She holds the distinction of being the first person in Juilliard's history to have been accepted simultaneously to its two most elite courses of study: both the Doctor of Musical Arts and the Artist Diploma, of which she chose the latter. Ms. Gendron holds a B.A. in Classics magna cum laude and with Phi Beta Kappa honors from Columbia University as a graduate of the highly selective Columbia-Juilliard joint-degree program, as well as a Master of Music degree and the coveted Artist Diploma from Juilliard.