Kim Kashkashian

Hailed as “an artist who combines a probing, restless intellect with enormous beauty of tone,” Ms. Kashkashians’ work as performing and recording artist and pedagogue has been recognized worldwide.

She won the coveted Grammy Award for her recording of Ligeti and Kurtag solo viola works in 2013, and received the George Peabody Medal and Switzerland’s Golden Bow Award for her contributions to music. In 2016, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2020, was named an Honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music.

As soloist Kashkashian has appeared with the orchestras of Berlin, London, Vienna, Milan, New York and Cleveland in collaboration with Eschenbach, Mehta, Welser-Moest, Kocsis, Dennis Russel Davies, Blomstedt, and Holliger.

Recital appearances include the great halls of Vienna, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Tokyo, Athens, London, New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia where Ms. Kashkashian appears with the Trio Tre Voce, and in duo partnerships with pianist Robert Levin and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky.
She is also a regular participant at the Verbier, Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Marlboro, and Ravinia festivals.

Pursuing her lifelong search for new directions in music making, Ms. Kashkashian has forged creative relationships with the world’s leading composers—including György Kurtág, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, Giya Kancheli, and Arvo Pärt and commissioned compositions from Eötvös, Ken Ueno, Betty Olivero, Thomas Larcher, Lera Auerbach, Tigran Mansurian, and Toshio Hosokawa.

Ms. Kashkashian’s long association with the ECM label has yielded a discography that has garnered an abundance of praise and international awards—including a Grammy in 2013 for her solo recording of works by György Ligeti and György Kurtág, a Cannes Classical Award in 2001 for her recording of the viola concertos of Kurtág, Béla Bartók, and Péter Eötvös, and an Edison Prize in 1999 for her recording with pianist Robert Levin of the sonatas of Johannes Brahms. Ms. Kashkashian’s most recent recording of the six unaccompanied suites of J.S. Bach, was released to critical acclaim in October 2018 and garnered the Opus Klassik Prize.

Ms. Kashkashian, who studied with Karen Tuttle and Walter Trampler at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory and Felix Galimir at Vermont’s Marlboro Festival has held teaching positions at Indiana University, the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik, and the Hans Eisler Hochschule of Berlin. Currently, Ms. Kashkashian makes her home in Boston where she coaches chamber music and viola at New England Conservatory of Music.

Ms. Kashkashian is Founder and Artistic Director of “Music for Food” a musician-led hunger relief initiative that to date has presented hundreds of artists in concert which have created more than one and a half million free meals for people in need.

To learn more, visit www.musicforfood.net.