Multi-Focus Performance: Violin

Violinist Lorenz Gamma is internationally active as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and teacher. He has given master classes in the United States, Europe and Asia and served from 2005-2007 as visiting violin professor on the faculty at University of California, Los Angeles before joining the faculty at CalArts in Fall of 2007 as well as at California State University Long Beach in Fall of 2008.

As former co-leader of the Amar Quartet of Switzerland Mr. Gamma performed a full-time concert schedule touring through many of Europe’s most important chamber music venues, including the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Residence in Munich, the Stefaniensaal in Graz, the Cologne Philharmonic, as well as in many other cities such as London, Paris, New York, Teheran etc. From 1999-2007, the quartet has been one of just two groups worldwide performing permanently on a set of four Stradivari instruments. Prior to his activity with the quartet, Lorenz Gamma served as concertmaster of the Northwest Sinfonietta in Seattle and as Principal of the Zurich Opera Orchestra.

Mr. Gamma has often appeared as soloist with orchestra, performing over twenty different concertos by Bach, Beethoven, Bruch, Lutoslawski, Mozart, Piazzolla, Wieniawski, Schumann, Spohr, Tartini, Vivaldi and others, and holds an extensive record of appearances on radio, both in Europe and in the United States. His radio broadcasts and CD recordings include Schubert’s String Quintet and Piano Trio in E-flat, the “Quartet for the End of Time” by Messiæn, the complete String Quartets as well as works for Violin and Piano and the Piano Sextet by Carlos Chávez, the Dvorák Piano Quintet, the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, sonatas and partitas by Bach, Lazarof, Mozart, and Ravel, as well as string quartets by Brahms, Debussy, Dvorák, Haydn, Hindemith, Janácek, Mozart, Ravel, Shostakovich, Ullmann and Verdi. Musicians he collaborated with include Heinz Holliger, Paul Katz, Ronald Leonard, Donald McInnes, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and many others.

Having performed string quartets by more than forty composers, as well as most of the other standard chamber music repertoire of over eighty composers, Lorenz Gamma dedicates himself regularly to coaching chamber music in addition to teaching violin. His private and professional students have won numerous prizes and gone on to continue their studies at such schools as Indiana University, Manhattan School of Music, University of Southern California and others. He is a frequent guest at various summer festivals and serves since 2002 as first violinist of Southwest Chamber Music. The ensemble’s recent recordings of the entire chamber works of Carlos Chávez have been nominated for six GRAMMY® Awards and received two in the category for small ensemble, while the ensemble work “Aura” by Grawemeyer Award winning composer Chinary Ung, commissioned, premiered and recorded by the ensemble in 2006, was nominated for a Pulitzer Price.

Lorenz Gamma was born in Switzerland, where he received his initial training as a violinist. His further studies took place in the United States, with Franco Gulli (BM), Steven Staryk (MM) and Mark Kaplan (DMA).