The New Zealand-born American violinist is building an increasingly international career, combining major concerto appearances with a deep commitment to chamber music. This autumn brings another milestone: her first album, centred on Barber, Glass and Zorn.
The New Zealand-born American violinist has recently made New York City her home, while an increasingly busy international schedule is taking her from American orchestras and festivals to European stages. And on 2 October, she will add another milestone: the release of her debut album.
Yet Lewis is hardly arriving from nowhere.
Born in New Zealand, where she lived until the age of seven before moving with her family to the United States, she made her solo debut at 11 with the Pasadena POPS. Her musical education subsequently took her to the Colburn School of Performing Arts, where she studied with Aimée Kreston; the New England Conservatory, with Miriam Fried; and the Professional Studies Programme at Kronberg Academy, where she worked with Mihaela Martin.
A succession of distinctions helped accelerate her career: the Grand Prize at the Concert Artists Guild Competition in 2020, Kronberg Academy’s Prince of Hesse Prize and an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2021, followed by a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in 2022. That same year she was selected as a BBC New Generation Artist, a programme she remained part of until 2024.
Since then, the list of orchestras with which she has appeared has expanded considerably. It includes the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony and Vancouver Symphony, among others.
In 2023, she made her BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Jaime Martín.
Chamber music at the heart of her career
Lewis’s trajectory is notable not only for her orchestral appearances. Chamber music has remained central to her development.
She has collaborated with musicians including Mitsuko Uchida, Sir András Schiff, Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, Jonathan Biss and her former teacher Miriam Fried, and has appeared at venues and festivals including Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Marlboro Music Festival, the Kronberg Festival, Ravinia and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.
Her early career also included the founding of the Callisto Trio, which became the youngest ensemble to reach the senior-division finals of the Fischoff Competition.
That combination of solo and collaborative work remains visible in her current schedule. September alone takes Lewis from the Moab Music Festival to performances of Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the Austin Symphony, followed by a series of orchestral and chamber appearances at Festival Maribor in Slovenia.
A first album: Barber, Glass and Zorn
Her debut recording, New York Perspectives, offers a more personal snapshot of where Lewis finds herself now.
Recorded with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under New Zealand conductor Gemma New, the album brings together Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and John Zorn’s Partita for the Firebird for solo violin.
“I wanted to create something that would allow me to remember how I felt at this time, the music that I loved and the new experiences I was having,” Lewis says of the project. “I wanted to create something that felt alive.”
The choice of Barber has a particular emotional dimension. Lewis describes his Violin Concerto as “an old and dear friend in which you feel you can fly”. Glass’s First Violin Concerto, meanwhile, is a work that she says has stayed with her for several years.
But perhaps the most intriguing element is Zorn’s Partita for the Firebird, written in 2023 and inspired by both the 1718 “Firebird” Stradivarius and Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird. Lewis will give the work its first recording on the album.
The recording also establishes a link with her New Zealand roots through Gemma New and was supported by Lewis’s 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award.
That relationship with the Trust is leading to another important project. Lewis is also involved in the commissioning of a new violin concerto by New Zealand composer Salina Fisher, scheduled to receive its premiere in July 2027 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Samuel Lee.
New York Perspectives will be released by Delos/Outhere Music on 2 October 2026.
Berlin and the season ahead
Less than two weeks after the album’s release, Lewis will make her debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin at the Philharmonie on 14 October, returning to Barber’s Violin Concerto in a programme conducted by Riley Court-Wood. The concert forms part of the long-running Debüt im Deutschlandfunk Kultur series, created to introduce emerging artists with the DSO.
The months that follow underline the breadth of her musical interests. Alongside concerto engagements, her schedule includes Bach’s Goldberg Variations in Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s string-trio arrangement, recital programmes ranging from Mozart and Richard Strauss to Webern, Weinberg and Silvestrov, and chamber music by composers from Buxtehude to Morton Feldman.
Further ahead, she is scheduled to perform the Korngold Violin Concerto with the South Carolina Philharmonic and the Sibelius Violin Concerto with both the New Mexico Philharmonic and Indianapolis Symphony, the latter under Eun Sun Kim.
Lewis currently plays a composite violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini dating from around 1776, on loan from a charitable trust.
At a stage when the label “young artist” is beginning to give way to something more substantial, Geneva Lewis appears to be building her career without narrowing its scope: concerto soloist, chamber musician, advocate of contemporary repertoire and, with New York Perspectives, now recording artist as well.
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