Catherine Manoukian's professional career began
at the age of twelve when she won the grand prize at the 1994
Canadian Music Competition. She was born in Toronto, began violin
studies with her father, and made her first stage appearance at
the age of four. From 1994 to 2000, Catherine studied with the
late, world-renowned violin pedagogue Dorothy DeLay in New York.
Catherine's orchestral debut was with the Vancouver Symphony in
1994, playing Paganini's first violin concerto. In subsequent
years, she has soloed with many major North American and international
orchestras, including, among others, the CBC Vancouver Symphony,
the Calgary Philharmonic, the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, the
Tokyo Philharmonic, the Tokyo Symphony, the Osaka Century Orchestra,
and the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, all received to great
critical acclaim. She has collaborated with such conductors as
Mario Bernardi, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Keith Lockhart, Roy Goodman,
Peter Oundjian, Marek Pijarowski, Tomomi Nishimoto, Seikyo Kim,
and Eduard Topchjan.
As a recitalist, she has appeared on major stages of such cities
as New York, Washington D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, Toronto, Paris,
Tokyo, and Osaka, and has appeared as a chamber musician at the
Aspen, Caramoor, and Newport International Festivals.
Catherine has released four CDs. "Elegies and Rhapsodies",
a debut recital collection, "Chopin on Violin", consisting
of transcriptions for violin of works by Chopin, "Lyricism",
a collection of encores, and "Catherine Manoukian, Violin",
featuring the Shostakovich A minor and Khatchaturian Violin Concertos,
recorded with the Armenian Philharmonic under Eduard Topchjan.
A fifth CD is in planning stages.
In addition to her musical career, Catherine is currently pursuing
a PhD in philosophy at the University of Toronto. She holds a
CGS doctoral research grant, awarded by the social sciences and
humanities research council in Canada. She is interested in the
nature of rationality and works on giving an account of deviant
belief-forming processes. This means that she's secretly a neuroscientist.
Accompanist: Jackie Kyung-ah Shin
Jackie Kyung-ah Shin was born in Suwon, South-Korea and moved
to Toronto, Canada in 1996. She received her Master's (2001) and
Doctoral degree (2006) in Music Composition from University of
Toronto, Canada. She has composed music for various chamber groups
and orchestras as well as participating many international workshops
and seminars. Her orchestral piece GuiChun won the student composers'
competition. As a result, she had her piece premiered by the University
of Toronto Symphony Orchestra in December, 2005. In 2003, she
was one of the selected composers to participate in the inaugural
session of the National Arts Centre's Young Composers Programme.
Her piece "So god created the great white whale" (for
chamber ensemble) was premiered by members of l'Orchestre de la
Francophonie canadense from Montreal. She studied composition
with Ka Nin Chan, Orchestral conducting with Raffi Armenian, Music
theory with Edward Laufer at the University of Toronto (Canada).
She is an assistant conductor for the Ma-San Symphony Orchestra
in Korea.
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