A ‘most mature violinist’ whose playing has been described as ‘a dash of genius’(NJ Times), American violinist Christopher Kovalchick is a senior in the studio of Ms. Shirley Givens at the Peabody Conservatory. Other teachers include Christian Colberg, Ruotao Mao, and Joan Cordas. He will be graduating in May, 2006.

Kovalchick is currently principal violin of the Peabody Symphony Orchestra.  Previous orchestral positions at Peabody include concertmaster (2003-2004) and assistant concertmaster/principal (2002-2003) of the Peabody Concert Orchestra. He is also a first violinist in the Greater Trenton Symphony Orchestra, and previously enjoyed four year tenure with the Greater Princeton Youth Orchestra, where he served as concertmaster and guest soloist, In September of 2001, he performed John William’s “Theme from Schindler’s Listâ€� with orchestra at a 9/11 Memorial Concert in Hamilton, NJ, in which over $10,000 was raised to support the Red Cross. He has been a featured soloist at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and has toured with Linda Ronstadt and the American Festival Orchestra. He has also been the featured guest artist on the Johns Hopkins Knowledge for the World Tour in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York.

Kovalchick won Second Prize in the William Marbury Violin Competition at the Peabody Conservatory in March 2004. In June 2003, he took first place in the Glenn Miller National Competition, held in Clarinda, Iowa. Before matriculating to college he was a winner of the Princeton Youth Concerto Competition, the Anna B. Stokes Music Competition, and the Mercer County (NJ) Rotary Performing Arts Competition. He recently peformed a series of violin-guitar duo concerts with guitarist Benjamin Beirs, funded by a Career Development Grant from the Peabody Conservatory.

An avid chamber musician, Kovalchick has collaborated with such artists as Clinton Adams, Peter Landgren, Julian Yu,  Gita Ladd, and with Edward Polochick as a featured soloist with the Concert Artists of Baltimore. He has studied chamber music with Michael Kannen, Maria Lambros, Amit Peled, Herbert Greenberg, and Julian Gray among others.  He has performed in master classes with David Cerone, Aaron Rosand, Bertram Greenspan, Herold Klein, Thomas Lindsay, Oscar Ravina, Zvi Zeitlin, Oleh Krysa, Pamela Frank, the New Zealand String Quartet, Marc Johnson, Charles Schlueter, and the Ahn Trio.

Future engagements include a series of performances of the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas with mentor and friend Clinton Adams on the Friends of Chamber Music series (Baltimore, MD).

In addition to his studies at Peabody, Kovalchick is studying Mechanical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University, where he achieves Dean’s List honors. He was named to the USA Today 2006 All-American Team as an Honorable Mention. He was also named a Vredenburg Fellow by the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, and traveled to Hannover, Germany in Summer 2004 for a research assistantship at the Institute for Process Engineering, University of Hannover. In June 2005, he was awarded first prize in the International Student Paper Competition of the Society of Experimental Mechanics, for his research in the Experimental Mechanics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins. He also received an honorable mention in the 2006 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Awards. Kovalchick was elected as the ‘Young Trustee’ from the Johns Hopkins Class of 2006, and is a member of the JHU Board of Trustees (effective July 1, 2006).

Kovalchick was awarded a Fulbright Grant for study in Germany, but has turned the award down in order to pursue a PhD in Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. He will begin graduate study CalTech in September, 2010 through a full fellowship from the United States Department of Defense.

Kovalchick currently performs on a 1689 Tononi Pauaglionis, on loan from Ms. Doris Rothenberg..