Press Release

Violinist Karen Bentley Pollick's CD Dancing Suite to Suite won second place in the Best Classical Soloist Album category in the Just Plain Folks 2004 Music Awards. She performed selections from Dancing Suite to Suite at the gala awards ceremony at the Galaxy Theatre in Santa Ana, California on November 7, 2004. Karen's performance of Fanitullen on her hardangerfele (Norwegian folk fiddle) and Salsa for Karen by Ole Saxe enthralled the musically diverse crowd of 600, including heavy metal and hip hop bands, numerous singer/songwriters, jazz and classical performers. Following her performance, she joined forces with fellow award winners pianist Julianne Markavitch and santourist Kourosh Zolani in a dynamic trio arrangement of Isaac Albeniz' Asturias.

Just Plain Folks is a community comprised of more than 25,000 independent artists and individuals from the music industry and offers networking support and education for its members. The Just Plain Folks Music Awards has burgeoned into the largest record awards event with over 10,000 submissions from 85 countries, including 140,000 songs and 105 categories.

 Dancing Suite to Suite is a unique rendezvous between Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin and Ole Saxe's Dance Suite for Solo Violin. Karen Bentley Pollick performs these dances actually dancing suite to suite, with hip movements, violin slapping and foot stomping in Saxe's Flamenco Alojera, Ziga Dance (Balkan), Rhumba de la Luna (viola), Jig for Alan, Red Haired Tango and Salsa for Karen. She expresses a warm and flowing tone and a wild sense of rhythmic abandon in a passionate interpretation of this Dance Suite as well as a divine bliss and tender subtlety in Bach's Partita through the dances of the Baroque era: Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabanda, Giga, culminating with the legendary Ciaccona. These two Suites flow together in a natural conjunction of timelessness. Karen has performed this music at numerous concerts, both as solo violinist and with multi-percussionist Ian Dogole, and she premiered the Dance Suite for Solo Violin and Orchestra composed by Ole Saxe especially for Redwood Symphony in California, directed by Eric Kujawsky on April 21, 2002.

 Whenever Karen is on stage, dancing and playing her violin, the audience is thrilled to standing ovations. This album is very close to a live music experience at its best, recorded at Skywalker Ranch Soundstage to bring you a very warm and living quality of musical presence and vitality. On the last track Karen grabs her Norwegian Hardangerfele in a lively rendition of the epic tune Fanitullen after Odd Bakkerud, to join the mythic creature Noekken in search of her ancestral roots. Karen Bentley Pollick’s other CD titles include Ariel View: Tone Poems for Violin and Piano, a collaboration with Los Angeles pianist/composer Bruce Hanifan; and Konzerto/Succubus, a concerto for violin with electric orchestra composed by New York composer Stuart Diamond, with soprano Kerry Walsh in Succubus.

For a review of Dancing Suite to Suite on Music Web by Hans Theodor Wohlfahrt: http://www.musicweb.uk.net/SandH/2002/Aug02/dancing_suite_to_suite.htm

For more information about Just Plain Folks: http://www.jpfolks.com/home.html

For more information about Karen Bentley Pollick’s recordings and upcoming performances: http://www.kbentley.com