Carolin Pook is a German born violinist, composer, improviser, conductor & drummer from Brooklyn/New York. She creates and conducts music that is tailored to the featured performers and part improvised, part written, while melting those in a seamless way into one composition. The press has described her compositions as postmodern sound architecture with an almost magical intensity, her violin playing ranging from brazen abundance to sensitive sparsity.
Her great grandfather Waldemar von Bausznern was a known post romantic composer descended from Transylvanian Saxons, and her father, pianist Rainer Pook, has been Herbert van Karajan’s assistant at the Deutsche Oper Berlin for many years. Pook, who grew up in a classical music and operatic environment, picked up the violin at age 6, the piano and drums at age 12. She wrote a 2 hour long musical at age 18 while at the same time intensely studying scores of Arnold Schönberg, Mahler and Debussy. Between 2000 and 2006, while studying jazz violin and drums as a double major at the Conservatory in Cologne/Germany, her close collaborations with mentor and collegue Werner Dickel -professor for viola at the conservatory and founding member of the Ensemble Modern- has strengthened her focus on contemporary music performance and extended techniques, premiering and recording numerous chamber music works by composers such as Thomas Beimel, Dietrich Eichmann or York Höller. Since graduating in 2006 and in the same year being awarded several scholarships to study and live in New York, she has been commissioned to write for the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie and Roy Hargrove quintet, for free Jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and an 8-piece percussion ensemble, and she continues to write a new program for her 3-year old Brooklyn based chamber workshop ensemble –THE POOKESTRA– several times a year.
Pook has studied with renowned performers and mentors such as Zipflo Reinhardt and Michael Gustorff (violin / 2000-2005), Mark Feldman (violin / 2006-2008), and Keith Copeland (drums / 2002-2006).
She is a sought after recording artist and arranger and has appeared on over 40 recordings for artists such as Kenny Garrett, Die Fantastischen Vier and Mike Doughty, to name a few.She has been a sought after interpreter of Jazz manouche (Gypsy Jazz), and performed hundreds of concerts in small clubs all around New York City, as well at Carnegie Hall, Joe’s Pub or Bistro Fade, while sharing the stage with Stephane Wrembel, Oli Soikelli, Paulus Schäfer, Titi Bamberger and Kussi Weiss.
In November 2014, Carolin Pook has been artist in residence at Peter Kowald Gesellschaft e.V./O.R.T. in Wuppertal, an in 2016, she was Improviser in Residence in Moers/Germany while premiering a new composition for 8 violinists who also play percussion with their feet -herself playing both violin and drums- at Moers Festival.
Her commissions 2017 include music for a theatre production of the 'Wuppertaler Bühnen' (Don Quichote, directed by Robert Sturm), music for string quartet and SPACEPILOT for Moers Festival, and a piece for EOS chamber orchestra Cologne featuring herself as a soloist on violin (directed by Susanne Blumenthal).
During the pandemic, while still living in New York, Carolin Pook created a recording concept for her ensemble The Pookestra, trying to keep the momentum going and still be able to improvise together. She wrote 4 suites of music and picked a recording date and time. Everyone would record the music together, at the same exact time, without seeing or hearing each other play. The files were sent to an engineer, who put it together. The astounding result lead to releasing an album: ‘WELTRAUM DANCES” (March 2021).
In April 2022, Carolin Pook’s violin concerto ‘ABOUT TIME’ was premiered by SJSO Orchestra and Hannah Weirich (Ensemble Musikfabrik) as the soloist.
Since 2023 she has worked for Theater for Niedersachsen as a composer/performer, became a member of Kussi Weiss Trio (Sinti Jazz) and teaches Jazz violin at University Hildesheim/ Institut for Music Music Science.