Gwendolyn Masin is the descendant of a long line of professional musicians from Central and Eastern Europe. Born in Amsterdam, she began her musical education at the age of three when, inspired by her Hungarian grandmother, she began to play the piano. She took up the violin at the age of five and within her first year of schooling, gave her début performance in the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest.
Aged eleven she was introduced to the Irish public when she played a recital in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, and later that year appeared on
The Late Late Show. She has since been a regular guest on TV and radio productions in various countries. Her teachers have included her parents, Maria Kelemen and Ronald Masin, as well as Herman Krebbers, Igor Ozim, Ana Chumachenco, Zakhar Bron and Shmuel Ashkenasi. She has won many prestigious prizes and awards in South Africa, the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands and Switzerland and has gained degrees with high honours from the Royal Schools of Music in London, the Hochschule der Künste in Berne (Switzerland) and the Musikhochschule in Lübeck (Germany).
Gwendolyn performs extensively in Europe and South Africa and has played as a soloist with orchestras such as the Saint Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, the Bernese Symphony Orchestra, the Musica Viva Chamber Orchestra (Moscow) and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Festival appearances include the West Cork Chamber Music Festival (Ireland), Prussia Cove (UK), Internationaal Kamermuziekfestival Schiermonnikoog (The Netherlands) and Festival Internazionale della Musica Linari (Italy).
She has recorded for Tonus-Music Records and was the featured artist on the soundtrack to the film
Localisation.
Devoted to the performance of contemporary music, Gwendolyn Masin has premiered various works from Don Li, Urs Peter Schneider, Eric Sweeney and John Buckley, the latter of whom is currently completing his first violin concerto, dedicated to her.
Furthermore, she established the international, multidisciplinary series
In Search of Lost Time in 2004, and in 2006, the annual
Gaia Chamber Music Festival, which takes place in the region of Stuttgart. In 2007 she was appointed artistic director of the
Carrick Water Music Festival in Ireland.
A pedagogue since her teenage years, Gwendolyn’s book on violin teaching, entitled
Michaela’s Music House, will be published Europe-wide in 2008.
Gwendolyn plays a Lorenzo Carcassi violin (Florence, 1761).
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