Karen Gomyo

Karen Gomyo 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.

Highlights of Gomyo’s 2025–26 season included returns to the New York Philharmonic, New World Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Residentie Orkest, and Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. She also made debuts with the SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, Malaysian Philharmonic, and Hyogo Performing Arts Centre Orchestra. Other recent highlights include debuts with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, and Czech Philharmonic, as well as returns to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

As a passionate chamber musician, Gomyo has performed with artists such as Leif Ove Andsnes, James Ehnes, Susan Graham, and Ismo Eskelinen, with whom she recorded the duo album Carnival on BIS Records. She is also a champion of the nuevo tango music of Piazzolla, having collaborated with Piazzolla’s longtime pianist and tango legend Pablo Ziegler. In 2021, she released A Piazzolla Trilogy (BIS Records), recorded with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and guitarist Stephanie Jones.

Each season, Gomyo features a work written by a living composer. She gave the US premieres of Samy Moussa’s Adrano with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Matthias Pintscher’s mar’eh with the National Symphony Orchestra, and Xi Wang’s YEAR 2020 with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Tine Thing Helseth. In 2018, she performed the world premiere of Samuel Adams’s Chamber Concerto with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Tokyo, Gomyo began her musical career in Montreal 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. She also studied privately in Vienna with Heinrich Schiff.