artist statement
I’m a New York City based violinist specializing in contemporary music, creative projects, and socially engaged artistry. I enjoy exploring the variable nature of interpretation and memory in my writing, research and creative work. I’m also fascinated by the phenomenology of our embodied practice and collaborative relationships. I’m constantly seeking an understanding of “violin-ness” – the deeply ingrained violinistic practices and beliefs that shape our body, produce complex responses within us, and generate possibilities for variation and new discoveries.
biography
Pala Garcia is a critically acclaimed violinist whose artistic practice explores the variable nature of interpretation, embodied knowledge, and memory. Praised for her “immaculate, lustrous tone” (The Strad), Garcia brings a unique violinistic sensibility to her creative projects, ensemble work, and contemporary music practice. Garcia was recently named a 2024 National Arts Club Fellow, and was also featured as a leading innovative artist in the Washington Post’s “23 for ’23: Performers and Composers to Watch.”
Garcia is a member, co-founder, and co-director of Longleash, a “fearlessly accomplished” trio (Arts Desk UK) internationally recognized for their artistic excellence, new music advocacy, and “tight, lucid interpretations” (Tempo) of complex and compelling contemporary chamber works. Their artistic imprint can be defined through a love for sonic beauty and a spirit of experimentation, combined with a finely calibrated ensemble performance practice rooted in traditional chamber music values. Their unique creative projects range from recording and performance projects, multimedia creative collaborations, and commissioning endeavors that expand the keyboard trio’s instrumentarium. The group’s achievements in new music have been recognized by granting institutions including Villa Albertine, Chamber Music America, New Music USA, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Music Academy of the West, the Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress, and others. Trio performance highlights include featured appearances at the Noguchi Museum, Kennedy Center, TIME:SPANS Festival, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Princeton University, National Sawdust, the Ecstatic Music Festival, Kaufman Center, and the Americas Society. Their recordings, which have been recognized on “best-of” year-end lists by The New Yorker, Bandcamp, and I Care If You Listen, can be heard on New Focus Recordings, New Amsterdam Recordings, Innova, and archived broadcasts on WQXR, Classical WUOL, WSMR, and other outlets. The trio has commissioned, funded and premiered dozens of new chamber works, and directs The Loretto Project, an annual creative residency that gathers an international cohort of artists in central Kentucky every summer.
A debut solo album featuring the music of Peter Kramer will forthcoming this season on New Focus Recordings, with support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.
Garcia has enjoyed playing as a regular guest with many celebrated and world-class ensembles, including the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and A Far Cry chamber orchestra. Garcia was an academy fellow with the renowned Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra during the artistic directorship of Mariss Jansons, and performed regularly with this orchestra and its self-conducted chamber orchestra on multiple seasons of subscription concerts and international tours.
As a dedicated and expert educator, as well as longtime proponent of socially responsive artistry, Garcia maintains these vital components of her artistic practice through her work on faculty at The Juilliard School’s Preparatory Division (Music Advancement Program) and as a teaching artist with Carnegie Hall’s social impact programs. Garcia has served on the violin and chamber music faculty of Hunter College, and was a Senior Teaching Fellow at The Graduate Center, CUNY, where she was also the recipient of the Provost’s Fellowship and studied with Mark Steinberg. She is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where she received undergraduate and graduate degrees with the guidance of her primary teachers, Naoko Tanaka and Joel Smirnoff. Garcia is grateful to her earlier teachers, the late Dame Camilla Wicks and the late Elise Christianson, for guiding the beginning of her path in music.