AMY IWAZUMI
Violin

BM/MM, Juilliard; International Performing Artist & Composer

Amy Iwazumi, born in Galveston, Texas, began playing the violin at age three and gave her first recital at the age of five. Currently she performs actively as a soloist and chamber musician in the U.S., and abroad.

Based in New York City, Miss Iwazumi has given recitals and concerts in and around Lincoln Center including the Clark Studio Theater, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Alice Tully Hall, and Avery Fisher Hall; Weill Recital Hall, Zankel Hall, and Steinway Hall. She has also served as concertmaster for the Juilliard Orchestra under the direction of Sir Roger Norrington at the Isaac Stern Auditorium in Carnegie Hall.

Nationally, she has performed at various halls all over the U.S., including the Bayer-Benedict Music Tent and Harris Hall in Aspen, CO. Abroad, she has given concerts in Austria, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, Slovenia, South Korea, Taiwan, and the UK. Miss Iwazumi has performed with orchestras and ensembles such as the Little Orchestra Society at Avery Fisher Hall, National Symphony of Santo Domingo, International Sejong Soloists, Yonkers Philharmonic, and Young Artists' Orchestra of the Aspen Music Festival. She has performed at several music festivals including the Aspen Music Festival, Festival Ljubljana in Slovenia, Great Mountains Music Festival, Holland Music Sessions, Salzburg Sommerakademie, and the Taipei International Arts Festival.

She has won numerous awards and top prizes at the Kiwanis Music Festival in Canada, the Canadian Music Competition, the Second International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians, the Fine Arts Society-Enrico Fermi Concerto Competition, Music Teachers Council of Westchester Scholarship Competition, and the JAA Music Scholarship Awards Competition.

She also plays in a violin duo with her brother Ray, as the Ray and Amy Violin Duo. Together they have performed on NHK National Radio of Japan as part of the “Meikyoku Recital” Series and had received the Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant which led to several broadcasts of their performances on WQXR. They have also given their Tokyo debut recital in November of 2007 at the prestigious JT Art Hall.

Miss Iwazumi's compositions have also gained recognition, receiving a Special Citation from the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award Competition. Her orchestral work, “Thoughts” has been chosen and performed by the Juilliard Pre-College Symphony in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater in Lincoln Center. Recently, “The Japanese Four Seasons,” an arrangement of four Japanese songs has been commissioned by the Inoue Chamber Ensemble and performed in Brazil to critical acclaim. The work is to be performed again by the ensemble at Columbia University as part of their “Nuances of Peace” series.

Miss Iwazumi entered the Juilliard Pre-College Division at the age of eight as a scholarship student of the late Dorothy DeLay and continued her studies at The Juilliard School as a student of Hyo Kang, receiving her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Music. Recent achievements include a grant from the Asian Cultural Council to study traditional Japanese music and art in Japan, and a concert tour of Brazil performing as the IS Duo with pianist Mei-Ting Sun..