"Memorial, Memory & Meaning: A Performance with Artist Carrie Mae Weems"
FEATURING
Photo Credit: Juergen Frank
Grammy Award-winning violinist Jennifer Koh is recognized
for her intense, commanding performances, delivered with
dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance. She is a forward-
thinking artist dedicated to exploring a broad and eclectic
repertoire. She has expanded the contemporary violin
repertoire through a wide range of commissioning projects
and has premiered more than 100 works written especially for
her. Named Musical America鈥檚 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year,
Koh has won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in
Moscow, Concert Artists Guild Competition, and an Avery
Fisher Career Grant. She has a BA in English literature from
Oberlin College and studied at the Curtis Institute, where she
worked with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir. She is an active
lecturer, teacher, and recording artist for Cedille Records. Koh
is Artistic Director of the Kennedy Center鈥檚 Fortas Chamber
Music Concerts and Artistic Director of arco collaborative, an
artist-driven nonprofit.
Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz
VIJAY IYER
VIJAY IYER has carved out a unique path as an influential,
prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music.
A composer and pianist active and revered across multiple
musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently
innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last
three decades, earning him a place as one of the leading
music-makers of his generation. His honors include a
MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a
United States Artist Fellowship, three Grammy nominations,
and the Alpert Award in the Arts. His newest albums are
Defiant Life (ECM, 2025), his second suite of duets with
visionary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith;
Compassion (ECM, 2024), featuring his celebrated trio with
drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh;
Trouble (BMOP/sound, 2024), a composer portrait album
comprising three of his orchestral works, including the titular
violin concerto performed by Jennifer Koh; and Love in Exile
(Verve, 2023), his Grammy-nominated collaboration with Arooj
Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily. The New York Times observed,
鈥淚yer鈥檚 music has always been both intelligent and
unpretentious, complex without being opaque; [he] ponders a
phrase with obsessive rumination, unveiling layers of shifting,
subtle emotion, before letting it fly with joyous abandon.鈥� He is
a professor at Harvard University.