Lorenz Gamma

Violinist Lorenz Gamma joined California State University at Northridge in fall 2015 with a full-time position, after having taught violin as an adjunct professor at UCLA, Indiana University in Bloomington and CalArts. He is internationally active as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and teacher, and gives frequent master classes in the United States, Europe and Asia. His private and professional violin students have won top prizes at numerous solo and chamber music competitions, and regularly gone on to continue their studies at such institutions as the Juilliard School, Indiana University, the Manhattan and Eastman Schools of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music, University of Southern California and the Colburn School. Having performed internationally a string quartet repertoire of over sixty composers, as well as a large part of the standard chamber music repertoire of over eighty composers, Mr. Gamma also dedicates himself with great passion to teaching chamber music.

As former co-leader of the Amar Quartet in Switzerland, Mr. Gamma performed a full-time concert schedule touring through many of Europe’s most important chamber music venues, including the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Residence in Munich, the Cologne Philharmonic, as well as venues in many other cities such as London, Paris, New York etc. Prior to his tenure with the quartet, Mr. Gamma served as concertmaster of the Northwest Sinfonietta in Seattle, and later as Principal of the Zurich Opera Orchestra.

As a soloist Lorenz Gamma has performed over twenty different concertos by Bach, Beethoven, Berg, Brahms, Bruch, Gubaidulina, Lutoslawski, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Piazzolla, Rubinstein, Schumann, Spohr, Tartini, Vivaldi, and Wieniawski. He also holds an extensive record of appearances on radio, both in Europe and in the United States. His radio broadcasts and CD recordings include Schubert’s String Quintet and Piano Trio in E-flat, the “Quartet for the End of Time” by Messiæn, the complete String Quartets as well as works for violin and piano and the Piano Sextet by Carlos Chávez, the Dvorák Piano Quintet, Mozart Clarinet Quintet, sonatas and partitas by Bach, Kodály, Lazarof, Mozart and Ravel, as well as string quartets by Brahms, Debussy, Dvorák, Haydn, Hindemith, Ives, Janácek, Mozart, Ortiz, Ravel, Shostakovich, Ullmann, Verdi and Wadada Leo Smith. Musicians he has collaborated with in chamber music include Heinz Holliger, Paul Katz, Ronald Leonard, Donald McInnes, Joseph Silverstein, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and many others.

For ten years, Lorenz Gamma served as first violinist of the Los Angeles based group Southwest Chamber Music. The ensemble’s recordings of the complete chamber music works of Carlos Chávez have been nominated for six Grammy Awards, winning two in 2004 and 2005.

Lorenz Gamma was born in Switzerland, where he received his initial training as a violinist. His further studies took place in the United States, with Franco Gulli, Steven Staryk and Mark Kaplan.