SARAH PLUM
Praised as “both an intrepid new music champion and a violin virtuoso” (textura), Sarah Plum is a defining figure in contemporary violin performance, an artist whose international career has unfolded alongside—and helped shape—the evolution of late-20th- and early-21st-century modernism. Her work is marked by commanding virtuosity, interpretive authority, and an enduring presence at many of the institutions, festivals, and premieres that have defined contemporary music over the past four decades.
Plum’s performance history traces a sustained global trajectory. She has appeared as a featured soloist at leading venues and festivals including Ars Musica Brussels, Festival d’Automne (Paris), Lucerne Festival, Archipel Geneva, Musikforum Basel, Ankunft:Neue Musik (Berlin), Quiet Cue Intermedia (Berlin), Spectrum NYC, the Andy Warhol Museum, and Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. She has been a central artistic presence at major international gatherings such as Ear Taxi Festival, SEAMUS, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, CHIME, CUBE, and Electronic Music Midwest—contexts in which her performances have not only presented new work, but have helped define what contemporary violin performance can sound like.
Following studies at The Juilliard School and completion of her DMA at SUNY Stony Brook, Plum’s formative professional years in Europe placed her at the center of the international new-music landscape at a pivotal historical moment. She performed with preeminent ensembles including Ensemble Modern, MusikFabrik, Nieuw Ensemble, and Ensemble Contrechamps, participating in landmark premieres and major international tours. During this period, she was involved in performances of seminal works by Brian Ferneyhough (Carceri d’Invenzione), Rebecca Saunders, Emmanuel Nunes, Salvatore Sciarrino, Toshio Hosokawa, Michael Jarrell, and Fred Frith, as well as major productions with Ensemble Modern and WDR—projects that situate her career within the core performance history of contemporary music rather than at its periphery.
Throughout her career, Plum has commissioned, premiered, and recorded an extensive body of repertoire—much of it written expressly for her—by composers including Sidney Corbett, Mari Takano, Laurie Schwartz, Joo-Won Park, Elizabeth Hoffman, Christian Carey, Eric Lyon, Charles Nichols, Christopher Adler, Jeff Herriott, Andrew List, Osnat Netzer, Ania Vu, and Jack Herscowitz. These works are not isolated events but part of a living repertoire that has been performed, refined, recorded, and passed forward. Her recent premiere of Mari Takano’s Double Concerto with the Chicago Composers Orchestra stands as a mature statement in a creative partnership spanning decades.
Plum’s approach to new music has followed curiosity rather than strategy—drawn to modern music, to the early impulses of modernism, to artistic friendship, and to the idea of leaving a mark through creations that endure. Over time, this orientation has resulted in a body of work distinguished by depth, continuity, and consequence. Pieces she has championed have entered broader circulation not through repetition alone, but through performances that foreground clarity, momentum, and expressive life, making even the most complex music speak directly to audiences.
Her complete solo discography on the Blue Griffin Recording label stands as a permanent record of this work. Comprised largely of world-premiere recordings, these albums have been praised for their interpretive coherence and structural insight and recognized as “an important addition to the contemporary violin concerto discography” (The WholeNote). Her long-standing collaboration with recording engineer Sergei Kvitko has produced recordings of exceptional clarity, ensuring these performances remain reference points for performers and scholars.
Equally central to Plum’s legacy is transmission. Since establishing her base in Chicago in 2018, she has continued to perform widely while extending her influence through teaching at the Music Institute of Chicago and Michigan State University. As a master teacher and mentor, she passes on not only repertoire, but an artistic orientation: rigor without rigidity, collaboration without hierarchy, and a belief that contemporary music belongs fully on the concert stage. Through her students—many of whom now perform, teach, and commission new work themselves—the repertoire she has helped bring into being continues to evolve and circulate.
Awarded the Gold Medal at the International Stulberg Competition at the outset of her professional life, Sarah Plum has built a career whose distinction lies in its long view: a life in music shaped by presence at key historical moments, by enduring artistic relationships, and by a commitment to leaving behind work that continues to matter.