Karen Bentley Pollick is a native of Palo Alto, California where she was concertmaster and conductor of the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra and studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco. She then attended Indiana University where she studied violin with Josef Gingold, coached string quartets with Rostislav Dubinsky and graduated with a Masters of Music Degree in Violin Performance in 1987. Other violin teachers include Nathan Milstein, Yuval Yaron, Glenn and Harold Dicterow, and David Balakrishnan.

She has several recordings of original music, including Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus, Ariel View and Dancing Suite to Suite. She has received three music awards from Just Plain Folks, including Best Instrumental and Best Song for Ariel View.  Ms. Pollick’s latest recording was recorded in March 2007 in Birmingham, Alabama and is comprised of duo compositions for violin/viola and piano by Ivan Sokolov, Jan Vičar and Ole Saxe. 

Ms. Pollick was concertmaster of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1984 and has participated in the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Composers Conferences as a champion of contemporary music.  Alongside pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov, she performed compositions by Charles Norman Mason, Dorothy Hindman and Sokolov at the American Academy of Rome in May 2006. With cellist Dennis Parker she concertized throughout the Czech Republic during the 2007 and 2008 American Spring Festivals.  She is a founding member of the Alys Stephens Center Chamber Players as well as the violinist in Paul Dresher’s Electro-Acoustic Band and has collaborated with the Seattle Chamber Players in their Icebreaker II:  Baltic Voices Festival, and the New York based Ensemble for the Romantic Century in their staged production of The Young Arthur Rubinstein. She has performed at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival and the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival.

Ms. Pollick performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860 and a 1987 viola by William Whedbee.  For more information:  http://www.kbentley.com