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 a GRAMMY®-nominated 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 Yo-Yo Ma, Rhiannon Giddens, and Augustin Hadelich.
In the 2026-27 season, Ouzounian appears in recital in New York, Hamburg, Chicago, Toronto, and Los Angeles, and makes her Boston Symphony Orchestra solo debut at the 2026 Tanglewood Festival as soloist in Kayhan Kalhor’s double concerto Venus in the Mirror. As a composer, her recent commissions include works for the Silkroad Ensemble, Salt Bay Chamberfest, and the Cello Teaching Repertoire Consortium, and during her 2026 residency at Lighthouse Works, she will be writing a string quartet commissioned by the Aeolus Quartet.
At the heart of Ouzounian’s artistic practice is her love of collaboration and the development of adventurous programs. Her current focus includes a trio of projects created with her husband, composer and animator Lembit Beecher: Mayrig, Dear Mountains, and Tell Me Again. Mayrig (“mother” in Armenian) is an immersive and intimate 65-minute show in which the voices of Karen’s mother and grandmother are interwoven with original arrangements of Armenian music of her family’s ancestral home of Anatolia, songs and stories drawn from their post-genocide home of Lebanon, the music of Charles Aznavour and Marin Marais, and recent works by Beecher, Layale Chaker, Nathalie Joachim, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and Ouzounian. In November 2024, Ouzounian 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 Ouzounian’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 the couple’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.
Since 2016, Ouzounian has been performing around the globe as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble, the group founded by Yo-Yo Ma that engages in cross-cultural collaboration and understanding. Recent tours with the Silkroad Ensemble include Sanctuary, Uplifted Voices, American Railroad, Phoenix Rising, and Kinan Azmeh and Kevork Mourad’s Home Within, and have featured Ouzounian’s works Songs of the Sap, Der Zor, and Imagined Anatolian Dance. 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.
Ouzounian holds Master of Music and Bachelor of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, 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.
www.karenouzounian.com
Instagram @karenouzounian