Jennifer Gersten interviews

Jennifer Gersten is a violinist and writer from Queens, New York. Winner of the 2018 Rubin Institute Prize for Music Criticism, granted by leading American music critics for "exceptional promise” in the field, she is a freelance journalist and critic, often on avant-garde music, for publications that include The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Gramophone, and The Wire. Her research as a journalist and performer, centered particularly on the Norwegian experimental music scene, has been facilitated by yearlong grants from Fulbright and the American Scandinavian Foundation.

A former tenured section violinist in Helsingborg Symfoniorkester (Sweden), Jennifer pursues avant-garde and improvised music projects in the US and Europe as a performer and producer, lately with groups that include the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, TAK Ensemble, the duo Goal Weight (with Maggie Cox), and the trio Hvidovrefjell (with Ole-Henrik Moe and Kari Rønnekleiv). Jennifer holds a doctorate in performance from Stony Brook University and a BA in English from Yale.