Music

Praised as “virtuosic” (Rutland Herald), violinist Jennifer Wei Gersten is pursuing a doctorate in performance at Stony Brook University as a student of Arnaud Sussmann, Jennifer Frautschi, Hagai Shaham, and Phil Setzer, with intensive chamber studies courtesy of Gil Kalish and Tina Dahl. In 2022, she performed Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto with the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra as winner of the graduate concerto competition. With pianist and style icon Laura Davey, Jennifer is half of the contemporary duo Double Standard, which made its sold-out debut in 2019. 

Jennifer has recently appeared with Craftsbury Chamber Players, Boston Festival Orchestra, and the Brooklyn-based Concerts on the Slope. She has served as concertmaster of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, and Colorado College Summer Music Orchestra; her summer festival appearances, in addition to Tanglewood and Colorado College, include Lucerne Festival Academy, Kneisel Hall, and Bowdoin. She has been fortunate to collaborate with John Ling, Ed RosenBerg III, and other composers on new solo and ensemble works featuring violin. She received her BA in English and creative writing at Yale, where upon graduation she was awarded the Wrexham Prize in Music for “that senior who, as a performer, has best exemplified the standards of Quincy Porter.” Watch her proselytizing on national television in the video above.

Currently based in Oslo, Jennifer is a 2022-23 Fulbright scholar based at the Norwegian Academy of Music, where she is conducting research on Øyvind Torvund and other contemporary Norwegian composers whose work draws upon Norwegian folk traditions. Jennifer studied with Elizabeth Chang at the School for Strings and Juilliard Pre-College and with Wendy Sharp at Yale. She is from Hollis, NY.