A native of Palo Alto, California Karen Bentley Pollick studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco and with Josef Gingold at Indiana University, earning BM and MM degrees with a cognate field in Choral Conducting. She joined the Paul Dresher ElectroAcoustic Band in 1999 and performs with Seattle based Joy Street Orchestra. Her multimedia project ‘Solo Violin and Alternating Currents’ received a grant from the NEA and evolved into ‘Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity’. Karen received a Seed Money Grant for Disseminated Performances from New York Women Composers. While residing in Vilnius she performed ‘Resonances from Vilna’ with pianist Jascha Nemtsov and premiered David A. Jaffe’s violin concerto How Did It Get So Late So Soon? with the Lithuanian National Opera
& Ballet Theatre Orchestra.
Karen’s debut recording for Toccata Classics presents Hermann Graedener’s two violin concertos with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Her recordings garnered top recognition in the Global Music Awards: Graedener Violin Concertos, Chamber Music of Ivan Sokolov, and Orchestral Music of Ole Saxe, featuring the premiere recording of his violin concerto My Manchu Princess & Dance Suite. Music for Emily Dickinson includes Ten Songs without Words by Ukrainian-American composer Virko Baley, and was awarded the 2024 American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music.
A founding member of Virtuosos de Cámara, Karen presented chamber music concerts in Puerto Vallarta and Nayarit and collaborated with Resonance Jazz Trio. Concert highlights include the Seattle premiere of Pietà by Jerry Mader alongside ROMANTARCTICA by Henning Kraggerud, plus live video of MAQA VIOLIN by Yitzhak Yedid. Karen tracked the hardangerfele solos in her San Pancho home studio for New Zealand composer Stephen Gallagher’s score for Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, released in December 2024.
Karen recorded Concertos from the Caucasus, featuring violin concertos by Georgian composer Alexi Machavariani, and Azerbaijan composers Azer Rzayev and Rauf Gadjiev with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra in October 2024 to be released on Toccata Classics in 2025.