BIOGRAPHY

Sought after for her “radiant” (The New York Times) performances full of “tremendous heart, bringing joy and a captivating sound to the stage” (The Strad), Karen Ouzounian is an acclaimed cellist and composer who creates music from a deeply personal place. She has appeared as a soloist in venues including the Konzerthaus Berlin, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Kölner Philharmonie, Tonhalle Düsseldorf and Carnegie Hall, championing a remarkable breadth of music with fierce commitment and emotional power. An omnivorous musical spirit who “powerfully shatters pigeonholes with her artistic partners” (Ravinia Magazine), she has premiered numerous works and collaborated with some of the most singular musicians of our time, including Rhiannon Giddens, Augustin Hadelich and Kayhan Kalhor. 

At the heart of Karen’s artistic practice is her love of collaboration and the development of adventurous programs. Her current focus includes a trio of projects created with composer and animator Lembit Beecher: Mayrig (“mother” in Armenian) is an intimate 60-minute show for cello with electronics, piano and vocals, in which the voices of Karen’s mother and grandmother are interwoven with original arrangements of Armenian music of her family’s past home of Anatolia, songs and stories drawn from their post-genocide home of Lebanon, and the beloved music of Charles Aznavour and Marin Marais. New compositions by Beecher reflect upon the experience of childhood, war, trauma, migration and the passage of time, while the music of friends Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim and Niloufar Nourbakhsh expand upon themes of generational transmission, rootedness and uprootedness, with music teeming with passion and celebration, resilience and rage. In November 2024, Karen premiered Dear Mountains, a 42-minute work co-composed with Beecher for solo cello, oud, percussion and SATB chorus. Written in nine movements, it juxtaposes stories told and retold in Karen’s family with scenes of music-making across the Armenian diaspora over the last 100 years, as seen through archival recordings and writings. Commissioned by Cantori New York, the Armenian Mirror-Spectator wrote of the work, “Ouzounian and Beecher have pulled off something remarkable.” Beecher’s Tell Me Again is a new cello concerto inspired by Lembit and Karen’s familial histories of migration, receiving its world premiere with conductor Eric Jacobsen and the Orlando Philharmonic, and its West Coast premiere with conductor Cristian Măcelaru and the 2024 Cabrillo Festival Orchestra. 

In other recent collaborations, Karen gave the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s Shorthand for solo cello and strings with The Knights, which she recorded for Avie Records and toured as soloist with The Knights throughout Germany, Denmark and the U.S. to critical acclaim. She subsequently performed Shorthand with conductor Jeffrey Kahane and the Sarasota Festival Orchestra, and gave its Canadian premiere at the Sweetwater Music Festival. She premiered and recorded Kayhan Kalhor’s Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur as a new triple concerto for solo kamancheh, cello, tabla and orchestra, with Kalhor, Sandeep Das, and Eric Jacobsen leading the Virginia Symphony, Orlando Philharmonic, and Greater Bridgeport Symphony. She developed, toured and recorded Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time; commissioned Bring Your Own Garden Party from Christina Courtin for cello/voice; gave the world premiere of Beecher’s A Year to the Day featuring tenor Nicholas Phan and violinist Augustin Hadelich and filmed for The Violin Channel; appeared with orchestras including the Milwaukee Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestra of Santiago in repertoire ranging from John Adams’s Absolute Jest to the Elgar Cello Concerto; created an evening-length video work In Motion, an exploration of heritage and family history through interviews, original compositions, and collaborations with visual artists Kevork Mourad and Nomi Sasaki and percussionist Haruka Fujii; and wrote new compositions and arrangements premiered by the Silkroad Ensemble, Noe Music and the Aizuri Quartet. 

Dedicated to the art of chamber music, Karen was the founding cellist of the Aizuri Quartet for eleven years, during which time the ensemble was awarded major chamber music prizes on three continents, including Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award, the Grand Prize at the M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition, the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan and the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition in London, and served as the MetLiveArts String Quartet-in-Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Quartet’s debut album, Blueprinting, featuring new works written for the Aizuri Quartet by five American composers, was released by New Amsterdam Records to critical acclaim (“In a word, stunning” - I Care If You Listen), nominated for a GRAMMY Award, and named one of NPR Music’s Best Classical Albums. Since 2016 Karen has been performing around the globe as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble, the group founded by Yo-Yo Ma that engages cross-cultural collaboration and understanding. Recent tours with the Silkroad Ensemble include Uplifted Voices, which included the world premiere of her composition Der Zor, American Railroad, Phoenix Rising, and Kinan Azmeh and Kevork Mourad’s Home Within. She has appeared at the Marlboro, Ojai, Ravinia, Caramoor and IMS Prussia Cove festivals, toured with Musicians from Marlboro, and is a member of the Brooklyn-based ensemble The Knights. 

Passionate about nurturing the next generation of artists, Karen serves on the faculty of the Sarasota Music Festival, has worked with cello, chamber music and composition students at USC, Princeton, NYU, Oberlin, the Royal Conservatory of Music and Glenn Gould School in Toronto, the Hartt School, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and has served as a mentor in The Juilliard School’s Mentoring Program. Karen holds Master of Music and Bachelor of Music degrees from Juilliard, where she was a student of Timothy Eddy, a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music, and is a recipient of the S&R Foundation’s Washington Award. Born to Lebanese-Armenian parents in Toronto, she resides in New York City with her husband, Lembit Beecher.