Alisa R. Gukasian 

   

Biography 

 

Alisa Roberta Gukasian (she/her) is a classical violinist, educator, researcher, and arts administrator based in Southern California. She is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts in Violin Performance at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where she studies with Varty Manouelian as a recipient of the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship. She has performed in Russia, Armenia, and throughout the United States as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player.

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   Her emerging doctoral research connects violin pedagogy and performance practice with performance psychology. Her interests include the transmission of French, Italian, and Soviet violin traditions; flow and arousal in performance; and musicians’ experiences of observation, evaluation, and stage preparation.

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   Gukasian serves as the EMMI and K–12 Instrumental Assistant at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, where she coaches students and ensembles and supports the artistic and administrative direction of the instrumental music program. She has also coached young musicians at the Colburn Chamber Music Intensive. At UCLA, she served as a Teaching Assistant for The Art of Listening and is an Armenian Music Program Fellow, studying the kamancha and participating in community outreach.

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   Her recent artistic development has included study with Fabiola Kim at Sounding Point Academy and performances in masterclasses for James Ehnes, Amy Schwartz Moretti, Kyung Sun Lee, and Martin Beaver. She also supported administrative operations and social-media communications at the Borromeo Music Festival in Switzerland.

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   A former Whitsett Smithsonian Curatorial and Enrichment Fellow, Gukasian researched violin pedagogy and immigrant influences on American musical culture at the National Museum of American History. She holds an MM from UCLA, where she studied with Movses Pogossian and Varty Manouelian, and bachelor’s degrees in Violin Performance and History, with honors, from CSUN, where she studied with Lorenz Gamma.