Violinist, Gabriel Bolkosky was born and raised in
Detroit, Michigan. He has performed hundreds of new
works including premieres of works by Thomas Ades,
Michael Torke and Andrew Mead. Recently, Gabe
performed in a duo with Marimba playing works by
Allejandro Vinao and Astor Piazzola, placing third in
the Vienna International Perrenoud competition. Gabe
also recently won the Cleveland Institute of Music
Competition playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto.
As a founding member of the new-music sextet, Non
sequitur, Gabe has performed all over the United
States and recently at the Karnatic Lab Music Festival
in the Netherlands. In April of 2001Non sequitur will
make its New York City debut playing music of Evan
Haus among other works. The sextet has also given
workshops in improvisation and musicianship to
thousands of children including nearly five thousand
in the Aspen, Colorado valley. The workshops
introduce music in a new light to the children and
demonstrate to them how to be more sensitive as human
beings through the musical process. Non sequitur has
also given workshops to young composers at the Walden
School in Dublin, New Hampshire. This coming July
they will serve a ten-day residency at the Walden School.
Recently, Gabe has been named the new executive
director of the nonprofit organization The Phoenix
Ensemble, an Ann Arbor based chamber orchestra and
experimental ensemble. He also acts as concertmaster
of the group.
As a teacher, Gabe currently works with twenty-one
students privately. For the last two summers, he has
been assistant director of the Cleveland, Ohio based
program, Strings Attached, an intensive, month-long
string program for inner city youth, sponsored by the
Twenty First Century Community Learning Project. In
the coming months he will serve on the faculty of
Suzuki Institutes in Portland Maine and Salt Lake
City, Utah. Last year he worked as the teaching
assistant for Donald Weilerstein (founding member of
the Cleveland String Quartet).
Currently Gabe is pursuing a Masters in Improvisation
at the University of Michigan under the guidance of Ed
Sarath and Ellen Rowe.