Gabriela Diaz, Violin

Gabriela Diaz holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from New England Conservatory, where she was a student of James Buswell. She has attended the Aspen Music Festival, the Sarasota Music Festival, and has performed at the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, North Country Chamber Players, Monadnock Music, Apple Hill, Vail Valley Bravo Music Festival, and Cactus Pear Festival, among others. In the summer of 2007, Diaz acted as Concertmistress under Pierre Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy in Lucerne, Switzerland. Devoted to contemporary music, Diaz has been fortunate to work closely with many significant living composers on their own compositions, namely Pierre Boulez, Magnus Lindberg, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Lucier, Steve Reich, Brian Ferneyhough, John Zorn, Osvaldo Golijov, Lee Hyla, and Helmut Lachenmann. In 2003, she won the BMOP/NEC concerto competition, playing Zorn’s Contes des Fees with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. She also became the youngest person to ever record the Ligeti Violin Concerto, recorded for Mode Records with New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Ensemble (not yet released). She is actively involved in contemporary music concerts at NEC, Harvard, and MIT, and is a member of the Callithumpian Consort, Firebird, and White Rabbit Ensembles. Boston critics have mentioned Diaz as “a young violin master ... Diaz shone in her extended solo passages.” Lloyd Schwartz of the Boston Phoenix noted, “… Gabriela Diaz in a bewitching performance of Pierre Boulez’s 1991 Anthèmes. The come-hither meow of Diaz’s upward slides and her sustained pianissimo fade-out were miracles of color, texture, and feeling.” Others have remarked on her “vibrant playing,” “polished technique,” “vivid,” and “elegant, accomplished playing.”

Recordings available: Mode Records, New World Records, BMOPSound, Centaur Records

Georgia native Gabriela Diaz began her musical training at the age of five, studying piano with her mother, and the next year, violin with her father. Shortly before her 16th birthday, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, a type of lymphatic cancer. She was treated with chemotherapy and radiation at Egleston Children's Hospital in Atlanta and the Medical Center in Columbus. As a cancer survivor, Diaz is committed to cancer research and treatment. She has lent her talents to a wide range of related programs and organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Beth Israel Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, The Race for the Cure, OnCare, Inc., the Columbus Medical Center, and the Egleston Children’s Hospital at Emory University in Atlanta. In 2004, Diaz was a recipient of a grant from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation. This grant enabled her to begin organizing a series of chamber music concerts in cancer units at various hospitals in Boston called the Boston Hope Ensemble.