Gregor Kitzis Violin and Musical Saw

Gregor Kitzis plays regularly with The Orchestra of St. Lukes at Carnegie Hall, is the concertmaster of Orchestra of Our Time, the first violinist of the Scorchio Electric String Quartet and the Klang String Quartet and is a founding member of The Ouluska Pass Chamber Music Festival in Saranac Lake, N.Y. He has performed Baroque music at Blanche Moyse's New England Bach Festival and on period instruments with The Grand Tour Orchestra, The American Classical Orchestra and Clarion, performed chamber music by Holocaust composers with National Musical Arts (membership consists mostly of principal players of the National Symphony in Washington, D.C.) presented by the National Holocaust Museum, premiered and recorded countless new works with ensembles including Speculum Musicae, The Group For Contemporary Music, Bang On A Can's Spit Orchestra, The Glass Farm Ensemble, the SEM Ensemble, the Albany Symphony, Marin Alsop’s Concordia, Ensemble 21 and North/South Consonance, arranged, performed and recorded for David Bowie, been the string contractor for TV appearances with Enya and performed with artists ranging from Anthony Braxton, Elliot Sharp and Don Byron to John Cage, Morton Feldman, Elliot Carter and George Crumb playing everything from solo and chamber music recitals and Broadway Shows to rock, ragtime, Klezmer, Indian and Tango in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to the late CBGB's, The Kitchen, The Knitting Factory, Saturday Night Live, the David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Rosie O'Donnell and Jay Leno Shows, and new music and jazz festivals throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. He also owns an inspiring collection of old French bows featuring examples by Tourte, Grand Adam and Voirin and plays an old, Italian violin made in the 1690’s by Giovanni Grancino.

Of his performance of Nils Vigeland's "Ives Music", The New York Times called it, "scratchier and more mistuned than even Ives would have found amusing."

Subsequently, they wrote, "The important violin solos were excellently projected by Gregor Kitzis, sometimes with whistling purity, always with vivid presence." - Paul Griffiths, New York Times, 11/22/00

More recently,(link hidden) reviewed a solo performance with the Albany Symphony at Carnegie Hall in May of 2010 as “authentic, jaw-dropping fiddling” and American Record Guide reviewed the same performance saying “Kitzis stole the show in his procession from one end of Carnegie Hall to another, his violin resonating brilliantly and vanishing with ghostly shivers in Carnegie’s remarkable acoustic.”