Art Restart Podcast: Johnny Gandelsman
In this episode of the Art Restart podcast, violinist Johnny Gandelsman describes how he shifted from being a young talent focused
on a traditional soloist’s career to becoming an adventurer, challenging classical
music’s conventions to prove that experimentation and community are as essential to
music as technique.
Johnny has long championed the dissolution of genre boundaries to celebrate music’s unique power to bridge cultural divides. During COVID, He set out to commission 22 composers from all over the country to create new works for the solo violin. The project has now resulted in an album titled “This Is America: an Anthology 2020-2021,” a three-CD set with a 40-page booklet produced by In a Circle Records. Pitchfork raves, “'This Is America' stirs feelings about our country that are almost hard to recognize: pride, hope, and the simple relief of consensus reality.”