Jennifer Koh stands out among violinists for her willingness to program demanding cycles such as the complete J.S. Bach sonatas and partitas in a single evening or to champion demanding contemporary scores, among them Kaija Saariaho’s Graal Théâtre concerto. Audiences respond with standing ovations and critics respond with high praise. She divides her schedule evenly among orchestral solo appearances, chamber-music partnerships, and solo recitals, moving freely across a wide stylistic spectrum.
Born to Korean parents in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, on 8 October 1976, Koh emerged as a prodigy when she made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age eleven. She pursued degrees in English literature at Oberlin College and in music at the Oberlin Conservatory before continuing violin studies at the Curtis Institute under Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir. While still an Oberlin student she earned the silver medal at the 1994 Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow; because no gold medal was awarded that year, the seventeen-year-old effectively claimed first place. Later the same year she won the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and in 1995 she received an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Her Carnegie Hall debut followed in November 1995, featuring works by J.S. Bach, Mozart, Ysaÿe, and Franck. Early recordings include a 1997 BIS account of the Uuno Klami Violin Concerto and a 2001 Cedille collection of solo chaconnes by Bach, Reger, and Richard Barth.
By the early 2000s Koh had secured her place among the leading violinists of her generation. She first appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra in 2003, earning acclaim for her reading of the Menotti concerto, and received further international notice in 2005 when she performed the Nielsen concerto with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Her programs regularly juxtapose familiar scores by Vivaldi, Mozart, and Beethoven with less frequently heard or brand-new works by Szymanowski, Ruggles, and Jennifer Higdon. In 2010 she and pianist Benjamin Hochman introduced Lera Auerbach’s Double Concerto for violin and piano with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic; the following year she gave the premiere of John Zorn’s Passagen at New York’s Miller Theater. Major orchestras with which she has appeared include those of New York, Los Angeles, and St. Louis, as well as the Czech Philharmonic and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra. Chamber partners have included violinist Jaime Laredo, cellist Christian Poltéra, and pianist Reiko Uchida.
During the 2010s Koh launched two large-scale initiatives. Bach and Beyond explored links between Bach’s unaccompanied violin music and later composers, while The New American Concerto, begun in 2017, commissioned new works from American creators; the resulting premieres include concertos by Vijay Iyer, Christopher Cerrone, and Missy Mazzoli. In 2019 she released the duo album Limitless, recorded with several of the featured composers. The concluding volume of Bach and Beyond appeared in 2020, followed in 2021 by a boxed set of the complete series. In 2022 she issued Alone Together, drawn from pieces written for the online commissioning project she organized to support composers during the coronavirus lockdown.
