Gwendolyn Masin is one of today’s significant concert violinists and an innovator in classical music. She performs internationally as a soloist, and in collaboration with musicians, artists, and orchestras. Tours and live recordings include performances with all the Irish Symphony and Concert orchestras, many of the Hungarian Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, numerous Swiss Orchestras such as the Bernese Symphony Orchestra, the Slovak State Philharmonic, and orchestras of the Americas such as Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM, Savannah and Georgia Philharmonic Orchestras. Concerts and masterclasses take her all over Europe and the United States, as well as Asia, South Africa, and the Middle East.
Masin is a recording artist for Naxos and Orchid Classics and a commissioner for contemporary music. She has premiered works by, amongst others, Thorsten Encke, Ákos Hoffman, Don Li, Daniel Schnyder, Dobrinka Tabakova and John Buckley. The latter dedicated his first violin concerto to her.
Her discography covers a wide spectrum of repertoire including neglected works by Irene Wieniawska or Zara Levina and much-loved favourites such as Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. The latter was voted amongst the top five releases of 2020 by Art Muse London.
Violin in hand, she has been a keynote speaker at platforms as diverse as international conferences of the European String Teachers Association, TEDxBern, TU Dublin’s Conservatory of Music and Drama, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Conservatório de Música da Metropolitana Lisbon, Swiss Fundraising, a string of colleges in North America including Princeton University, Berklee College of Music, Georgia Southern University Armstrong Campus, as well as major institutes in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Israel.
Masin is founding artistic director of GAIA Music Festival. The festival takes place annually since 2006 and is recognised as one of Switzerland’s chamber music centres. Notable artistic partnerships include her own series for Casino Bern for which Masin created elaborate, one-off productions involving classical music and other music genres and art disciplines from 2018 to 2023. Masin is artistic director of the International Chamber Music Series, and artistic director and faculty member of the International Master Course at Dublin’s National Concert Hall. Faculty members of the NCH IMC summer festival academy have included
Gilles Apap, Frans Helmerson, Gary Hoffman, Kim Kashkashian, Mihaela Martin, and Lars Anders Tomter. She is a director of the Music Instrument Fund of Ireland which celebrates 30 years in 2025 and is a member of the Cultural Commission of Berne.
In 2009, the award-winning, Michaela’s Music House, The Magic of the Violin, was published. It marked her as the youngest female violinist to have penned her own violin method. The book includes her own études and compositions and is available in English and German as part of the ESTA Edition collection available via Swiss music publisher house Müller & Schade. Masin’s articles have been published in The Strad Magazine, The Journal of Music, and other trade journals. From 2013 to 2020, Masin was professor and researcher of violin studies at the Haute École de Musique de Genève, Switzerland.
In 2020, as a response to COVID-19, Masin brought her in-person retreat, The Exhale, online. The Exhale provides professional courses and holistic masterclasses to musicians, practitioners, and artists from across the globe. During its two-year online presence, a team of 90 artists created more than 1,000 hours of classes, attracting more than 2,000 participants.
Masin holds degrees with highest honours from the Royal Schools of Music London; the Hochschule der Künste Berne; the Musikhochschule Lübeck, and a PhD from Trinity College. Her teachers included Herman Krebbers, Igor Ozim, Ana Chumachenco, Zakhar Bron and Shmuel Ashkenasi. She studies conducting in the class of Florian Ziemen since 2024.
She is the first Licensed Body Mapping Educator (Association for Body Mapping Education) in Switzerland. The violinist has Dutch, Hungarian, Czech, Irish, South African, and Swiss background, and speaks five languages.
Gwendolyn's website
