Gregor Kitzis

Gregor Kitzis, a founding member and first violinist of The Ouluska Pass Chamber Music Festival in gorgeous Saranac Lake, N.Y., has performed and recorded with orchestras including The Orchestra of St. Lukes, Blanche Moyse's New England Bach Festival, Concordia, Long Island Philharmonicand Bang On A Can's Spit Orchestra.

Gregor has performed with new music groups including, Modern Works,Ensemble 21, North/South Consonance, Essential Music, Common Sense,The Group For Contemporary Music, and the Crosstown, Xenakis andS.E.M. Ensembles.

Gregor has also performed with many bands, including Songs From a Random House, Gawk, Church of Betty and Voltaire.

Over the span of his career, Gregor has played everything from solo and chamber music recitals and Broadway Shows to rock, ragtime, Klezmer, Indian and Tango in venues ranging from Carnegie, Merkin, Avery Fischer and Alice Tully Halls to CBGB's, The Kitchen, and The Knitting Factory.

Additionally, Gregor has performed nationally on venues such as Saturday Night Live, Live From Lincoln Center, the David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Rosie O'Donnel and Jay Leno Shows, as well as new music and jazz festivals throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Gregor has worked with artists ranging from David Bowie, Anthony Braxton, Elliot Sharp, Paul McCartney and Don Byron to John Cage, Morton Feldman, Elliot Carter, James Taylor and George Crumb.

Recent highlights include chamber music performances with National Musical Arts (membership consists mostly of principal players of the National Symphony in Washington, D.C.) and recitals of Holocaust composers in Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles presented by the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

He also owns an inspiring collection of old French bows featuring examples by Tourte, Peccatte and a Voirin and plays an old, Italian violin made in 1700 by Giovanni Grancino.

Of his performance of Nils Vigeland's "Ives Music", The New York Times remarked that it was, "scratchier and more mistuned than even Ives would have found amusing." In November of 2000, Paul Griffiths of The New York Times wrote "The important violin solos were excellently projected by Gregor Kitzis, sometimes with whistling purity, always with vivid presence."