Karen Gomyo & Orion Weiss

Karen Gomyo, “a first-rate artist of real musical command, vitality, brilliance and intensity” (The Chicago Tribune), possesses a rare ability to captivate and connect intimately with audiences through her deeply emotional and heartfelt performances. With flawless command of the instrument and an elegance of expression, she is one of today’s leading violinists. 

Following a highly successful 2024/25 season which included debuts with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Orchestra RAI Torino, and the Helsinki, Oslo, and Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestras, as well as returns to the Baltimore, Indianapolis, Montreal, Toronto, Sydney, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, Karen’s 2025/26 season will bring more highly anticipated appearances. She returns to the New York Philharmonic, the New World Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Residentie Orkest in The Hague, and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. She will also make debuts with the SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, Malaysian Philharmonic, and the Hyogo Performing Arts Centre Orchestra. 

Other recent highlights include debuts with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Semyon Bychkov, the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra with Jakub Hrůša, the Pittsburgh Symphony, Orquesta Nacional de España, and the Czech Philharmonic, as well as returns to the Dallas Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Bamberg Symphony, and WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. 

As a passionate chamber musician, Karen has performed with artists such as Olli Mustonen, Leif Ove Andsnes, Enrico Pace, James Ehnes, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Daishin Kashimoto, Emmanuel Pahud, Julian Steckel, the late Heinrich Schiff, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, and guitarist Ismo Eskelinen, with whom she recorded the duo album Carnival on BIS Records. 

She is also a champion of the nuevo tango music of Astor Piazzolla, having collaborated with Piazzolla’s longtime pianist and tango legend Pablo Ziegler, as well as with bandoneon players Héctor del Curto, JP Jofre, and Marcelo Nisinman. In 2021, Karen released A Piazzolla Trilogy (BIS Records), recorded with the Strings of Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and guitarist Stephanie Jones. 

Each season, Karen features a work written by a living composer. She gave the U.S. premieres of Samy Moussa’s Violin Concerto Adrano with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Matthias Pintscher’s Concerto No. 2 Mar’eh with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. under the composer’s baton, and Xi Wang’s YEAR 2020: Concerto for Violin, Trumpet and Orchestra with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, conducted by Fabio Luisi. In 2018, she performed the world premiere of Samuel Adams’ Chamber Concerto with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen, written for her and commissioned for the CSO’s MusicNOW 20th anniversary series. 

Born in Tokyo, Karen began her musical career in Montréal and New York. She studied under the legendary pedagogue Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School before continuing her studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the New England Conservatory with Mauricio Fuks and Donald Weilerstein, respectively. She also studied privately for a formative period in Vienna with Heinrich Schiff. Karen participated as violinist, host, and narrator in a documentary film produced by NHK Japan about Antonio Stradivarius, The Mysteries of the Supreme Violin, which was broadcast worldwide on NHK WORLD. 

One of the most sought-after soloists and chamber music collaborators of his generation, Orion Weiss is widely regarded as a “brilliant pianist” (The New York Times) with “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post). With a warmth to his playing that outwardly reflects his engaging personality, Weiss’s “delicate, even finger work” (Washington Classical Review) and “head-spinning range of colors” (Chicago Tribune) have dazzled audiences around the world. He has performed with all of the major orchestras of North America, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic. 

In February of 2025, Weiss released Arc III, the final album in his recital trilogy, on First Hand Records. Weiss’s 24-25 performance schedule includes engagements with violinist James Ehnes, who joins Weiss for a return to London’s Wigmore Hall and for performances of the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas in Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Seattle. Among numerous engagements with U.S. orchestras, Weiss makes his David Geffen Hall debut in New York with the American Symphony Orchestra. He performs Bach's Goldberg Variations at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Newport Classical in Rhode Island, among other recitals. He is featured in performances at Italy’s Teatro Marrucino Biglietteria and in the Great Artists Series at Washington University in St. Louis, on a tour with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at LaMusica Chamber Music Festival in Sarasota, Florida. Weiss also tours Japan, playing the complete Brahms Violin Sonatas with Akiko Suwanai and performs the complete Grieg Sonatas with James Ehnes in Bergen, Norway. Over the last year, Weiss made his return to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, led by Michael Tilson Thomas, and debuted with the National Symphony Orchestra, led by Ken-David Masur. He also toured the United States and Asia with violinist Augustin Hadelich and performed at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.  

Known for his affinity for chamber music, Weiss performs regularly with Augustin Hadelich, as well as fellow violinists William Hagen and James Ehnes; pianists Michael Brown and Shai Wosner; and the Ariel, Parker, and Pacifica Quartets. As a recitalist and chamber musician, Weiss has appeared at venues and festivals including the Ravinia Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Mariinsky Theatre (St. Petersburg), the Edinburgh International Festival, the Schubert Club, Hong Kong Premiere Performances, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Lucerne Festival, Denver Friends of Chamber Music, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center’s Fortas Series, the 92nd Street Y, and at summer music festivals including Bard, Santa Fe, Bridgehampton, Bravo! Vail, Sunriver, and Grand Teton, among many others.  

Other highlights from Weiss’s recent seasons include a live-stream with the Minnesota Orchestra; a performance of Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; the release of his recording of Christopher Rouse’s Seeing, the first two installments of his critically acclaimed Arc recital trilogy; a recording of Korngold’s Left Hand concerto and other works with Leon Botstein and TON; and recordings of Gershwin’s complete works for piano and orchestra with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and JoAnn Falletta.  

Weiss can be heard on the Naxos, Telos, Bridge, First Hand, Yarlung, and Artek labels on recordings such as The Piano Protagonists with The Orchestra Now, led by Leon Botstein; a disc of Scarlatti Sonatas for Naxos; a solo recital disc of Bartók, Dvorák, and Prokofiev; Brahms Sonatas with violinist Arnaud Sussmann; a solo recital album of J.S. Bach, Scriabin, Mozart, and Carter; and a recital disc with cellist Julie Albers. In March 2022, First Hand Records released the first album of Weiss’s Arc Trilogy – Arc I: Granados, Janáček, Scriabin – a recording exploring the omens and tension of the period preceding World War I. Gramophone Magazine praised the album as “expansive, colorful, and texturally varied.” Arc II, featuring the music of Ravel, Brahms, and Shostakovich, was released in November 2022. Arc III, featuring works by Brahms, Schubert, Debussy, Dohnányi, Ligeti, and Talma, was released in February 2025 and called a “a worthy successor to the distinguished predecessors” by Gramophone. Over recent years, Weiss has also raised his profile through video, assembling a broad and growing YouTube videography that includes Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the Op. 39 Rachmaninoff etudes, and Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, among many others. 

In the summer of 2011, Weiss made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood as a last-minute replacement for Leon Fleisher. In recent seasons, he has also performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and in summer concerts with the New York Philharmonic at both Lincoln Center and the Bravo! Vail Valley Festival. In 2005, he toured Israel with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Itzhak Perlman.  

Weiss’s list of awards includes the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year, Gilmore Young Artist Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Gina Bachauer Scholarship at The Juilliard School, and the Mieczyslaw Munz Scholarship. He won the 2005 William Petschek Recital Award at Juilliard and made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall that April. Also in 2005, Weiss made his European debut in a recital at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. From 2002-2004, he was a member of Lincoln Center’s The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two). A native of Lyndhurst, Ohio, Weiss attended the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Young Artist Program through high school, where he studied with Paul Schenly, Daniel Shapiro, and Sergei Babayan. His other teachers include Joseph Kalichstein, Jerome Lowenthal, Kathryn Brown, and Edith Reed. In February 1999, Weiss made his Cleveland Orchestra debut performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. The next month, with less than 24 hours notice, Weiss stepped in to replace André Watts for a performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and was immediately invited to return for a performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto that October. In 2004, he graduated from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Emanuel Ax.