violin

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. Gabriela graduated with honors from New England Conservatory, receiving Bachelor and Master’s degrees in violin as a student of James Buswell; at NEC, she received the George W. Chadwick Medal, the highest undergraduate award, and the John Cage Award for commitment to contemporary music.

As a cancer survivor, Gabriela is committed to supporting cancer research and treatment in her capacity as a musician. In 2004, Gabriela was a recipient of a grant from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation, an award that enabled Gabriela to create and direct the Boston Hope Ensemble. A firm believer in the healing properties of music, Gabriela and her colleagues have performed in cancer units in Boston hospitals and presented benefit concerts for cancer research organizations in numerous venues.

A fierce champion of contemporary music, Gabriela has been fortunate to work closely with many significant living composers on their own compositions, namely Pierre Boulez, Magnus Lindberg, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Lucier, John Zorn, Roger Reynolds, Steve Reich, Brian Ferneyhough, and Helmut Lachenmann. Gabriela is a member of several Boston-area contemporary music groups, including Sound Icon, Ludovico Ensemble, Dinosuar Annex, Firebird Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, and Callithumpian Consort. She also plays regularly with Winsor Music, Mistral Music, Radius, and Emmanuel Music.

In 2012 Gabriela joined the violin faculty of Wellesley College.

Critics have acclaimed Gabriela as “a young violin master,” and “one of Boston’s most valuable players.” “…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 "indefatigably expressive" playing, “polished technique,” and “vivid and elegant playing.”

Highlights of the 2014-15 season include recording Roger Reynolds' solo work, "Kokoro," a premiere of a new concerto by Ken Ueno with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and recitals at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Gabriela can be heard on New World, Centaur, BMOPSound, Mode, Naxos, and Tzadik records.
Gabriela plays on a Vuillaume violin generously on loan from Mark Ptashne and a viola made by her father, Manuel Diaz.

Performances

Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | April 8, 2022
Coolidge Auditorium - Library of Congress | June 2, 2018
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | January 24, 2015
Moonshine Room at Club Café | March 12, 2013
John Knowles Paine Hall at Harvard University | March 31, 2012
Moonshine Room at Club Café | March 5, 2012
Club Oberon in Harvard Square | February 6, 2012
Club Oberon in Harvard Square | May 2, 2011
Club Oberon in Harvard Square | February 8, 2011
Club Oberon in Harvard Square | November 29, 2010

Pages

News and Press

[Concert Review] From BMOP, new music with a Hungarian accent

Hungarian music, Liszt once wrote, “is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.” Saturday’s ambitious “Magyar Madness” program, presented by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, had representatives of both. It also had two alluring world premieres.

The Boston Globe Full review
[Concert Review] Rock-solid But Not Maniacal

Though the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s “Magyar Madness” certainly delivered on the first word by presenting four works of Hungarian or Hungarian-descended composers including two premieres at Jordan Hall on Friday, we’ll give BMOP a pass on “Madness,” as the alliterative sobriquet was oxymoronic considering the event’s rock-solidity.

The Boston Musical Intelligencer Full review
[Concert Review] BMOP’s “Magyar Madness” delivers rewarding range of music with two premieres

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project, having promised a night of “Magyar Madness” Saturday at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, delivered world premieres of two outstanding, if well-behaved, works by Boston-based composers of Hungarian birth or ancestry and of Generation X vintage. The madness was supplied by the old-timers, Béla Bartók and Gyorgy Ligeti.

Crazy or sane, violent or poetic, all the music in Saturday’s concert touched on Hungary’s distinctive culture as a place apart, isolated by geography and language, yet also bubbling with a mix of European and Asiatic influences.

Boston Classical Review Full review
[Concert Review] Electro-acoustic Experiences at Harvard

Say hello to Hans Tutschku before the concert, and he will direct you to the "sweet spot" of the room. This past weekend was Tutschku's second "festival" of the year, where space and technology would share the limelight. Last fall, he curated "Sound in Space Festival: The Art of Interpretation of Electro-acoustic Music" at the Fenway Center in Boston. This spring, Tutschku was curator of a two-day festival "Jour, Contre-jour" with the Fromm Players at Harvard, held in the university's John Knowles Paine Concert Hall Friday night and last night.

Boston Music Intelligencer Full review
[Concert Review] Change of venue is music to their ears

On Tuesday night, I attended two richly satisfying concerts without stepping foot in a concert hall. The first was a new music program presented by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project at the Moonshine Room of the popular Club Cafe in the South End; the second was a performance by the up-and-coming Parker String Quartet in the Lizard Lounge, a low-slung basement club space in Cambridge. Next month, the Firebird Ensemble will perform in a local barbecue joint.

The Boston Globe Full review
[Concert Review] Grandeur and intimacy

...And in the Moonshine Room at the Club Café, one of the off-the-formal-concert-hall-beats of Gil Rose’s Boston Modern Orchestra Project, we got a rich program, with extraordinary soloists. A percussion tour de force by Samuel Solomon in John Cage’s paradoxically but accurately titled Composed Improvisation for Snare Drum (Solomon using not only his hands and drum sticks, but also a pencil, a gavel, pebbles, space change, and his breath). Rafael Popper-Keizer’s powerful rendition of the last-movement Ciaccona from Benjamin Britten’s Second Cello Suite.

The Boston Phoenix Full review