Eva C. Gruesser

Instructor in Music
Eva Gruesser

Education

Diploma The Juilliard School

B.M. Other

Biography

Ms. Gruesser enjoys a performing career as violin soloist, chamber musician and concertmaster. A native of Germany, Ms. Gruesser studied violin at the Freiburg Hochschule for Musik, and at the age of 12 played under the baton of Herbert von Karajan. She studied in Israel with Ilona Fehér and Ramy Shevelov and for two years was privileged to play in the Israel Philharmonic. After further study at the Juilliard School, Ms. Gruesser was invited in 1988 to join the Lark Quartet as first violinist, winning the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in New York and the Gold Medal at the Shostakovich International String Quartet Competition in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1991. With the Lark Quartet, Ms. Gruesser performed throughout the United States and Europe, appearing often at Lincoln Center and Weil Hall in New York and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. She has collaborated on commissions with many composers, including Aaron Jay Kernis, Libby Larsen, Penka Kouneva, Jon Deak and Joan Tower.

Ms. Gruesser currently holds the Roger Sessions Chair of concertmaster of the American Composers Orchestra and performs regularly with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. With ACO, she has collaborated with artists such as Wynton Marsalis, and works with many of America’s most exciting young composers. Ms. Gruesser is passionately committed to the art of teaching the violin, which she finds to be an inexhaustible path toward self-knowledge. She is equally committed to teaching chamber music and is a frequent juror for the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. She can be heard on recordings with Decca/Argo, Arabesque and New World Records.