Karen Lela Ferry, 23, began her violin studies at age 3 with Deborah Moench of Salt Lake City, and currently studies with Stephen Rose and Kimberly Meier-Sims at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) as a Violin Performance and Suzuki Pedagogy Master of Music student.  As a student at CIM, she has been selected to participate in the Intensive Duo Program and Advanced String Quartet Program and performs regularly in competitive chamber masterclasses. In the spring of 2022, Karen toured with her quartet, The Argo Quartet, in Florida bringing exuberant music to audiences young and old. Karen was recently awarded the Dr. Bennett Levine Memorial Award in Chamber Music and was a 2022 semi-finalist in the Glass City Chamber Music Competition with The Argo Quartet.  She also served as Student Body President, Board of Trustees member, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee leader at CIM.  

     Karen performs and gigs regularly with the New Texas Sinfonia, Mansfield Symphony Orchestra, Firelands Symphony Orchestra, and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. Karen has recently attended the National Orchestral Institute, Smithsonian String Quartet Seminar, Vivace International Music Festival and the Online Summer String Academy (OSSI), ENCORE Chamber Music Festival twice, and the Indiana Summer String Academy. 

Karen is a passionate private violin teacher and loves helping her students discover the joy and satisfaction that music-making brings. Karen is certified through the Suzuki Association of the Americas in all 10 Suzuki Books with practicum and Every Child Can. She substitutes regularly with the Cleveland Center for Suzuki Studies.

     Prior to her undergraduate studies at CIM with Jan Sloman and Stephen Rose, Karen studied for four years with Ralph Matson, former concertmaster of the Utah Symphony, and ten years at the Gifted Music School Conservatory.  As a teen, she attended ENCORE Chamber Music Festival twice, and the Indiana Summer String Academy. Karen grew up participating annually in the Intermountain Suzuki String Institute where her appreciation for the Suzuki Method began. Karen was also a six-year member of the Rocky Mountain Strings, a group of 45 young violinists from the Wasatch front with whom she concertized in Belgium and France.
     As a full-scholarship and charter student of the Gifted Music School Conservatory (GMS), Karen has performed with world-renowned artists and pedagogues such as Roberto Diaz, Jenny Oaks Baker, Leon Fleisher, Andres Cardenes, Joseph Silverstein, and Bill McLaughlin. Karen was featured with the GMS orchestra on Christopher O’Riley’s nationally acclaimed NPR program, From the Top. Karen has also been coached by Jamie Laredo, Ilya Kaler, Paul Kantor, Mihaela Martin, Ani Kavafian, Arnold Steinhardt, Wei He, Ara Gregorian, Jessica Lee, Jeffery Irvine, Eugene Watanabe, Henryk Kowalski, Olga Dubossarskaya Kaler, Wei He, Stefan Jackiw, Axel Strauss, Joela Jones, Robert Lipsett, Si-Yan Darren Li, Laurie Smukler, Jinjoo Cho, Nancy Zhou, Grigory Kalinovsky, Monte Belknap, Sel Kardan, Craig Jessop, Barlow Bradford, Vladimir Kulenovic, Kathryn Eberle, members of the Juilliard, Emerson, Borromeo, Orion, Ebene, Dover, Jupiter, Cavani, and Miro String Quartets, and conductors Leonard Slatkin, Andrew Grams, JoAnn Falleta, Rei Hotoda, and John Morris Russell.

      Karen made her solo orchestral debut at age 7 with the Utah Philharmonic. She has since soloed with the Utah Symphony four times: in 2014 as their Salute to Youth competition winner and three times in their 2017-2018 season, once as the grand prize winner of the Utah Symphony’s All-Star Evening competition winner playing Dvorak's Violin Concerto and the other two as a paid guest artist. 

Karen was the 3rd prize winner in the Stradivarius International Violin Competition Utah Division (year). She is also a three-division winner of the Utah Symphony Youth Guild competition, 1st place winner of the ASTA Stringfest at Weber State University, and 1st place winner of the UMTA Concerto Competition Jr. High and Elementary Divisions. In January 2015, Karen was awarded an honorable mention in the MTNA Performance Competition, Southwest Junior Strings Division in Santa Barbara, having won 1st place in the MTNA Junior Strings Division for Utah.

     Karen is the youngest of seven siblings all of whom have pursued music on a collegiate and professional level. Together they have been featured at concerts in the Box Elder County Tabernacle, the Salt Lake City Recital Hall, The LDS Assembly Hall, the BYU Concert Series, and numerous charity, community, and political events. Karen is passionate about using music to better the community and with the Gifted Music School, she helped raise $40,000 for the Children’s Justice Center by performing in its Sounds for Hope benefit concert, and most recently raised $15,000 by heading the 2022 Music For Food Benefit Concert to help fight hunger in the Greater Cleveland Area.

     In addition to music, Karen enjoys running, singing, tap dancing, doing yoga, visiting her home in Corinne, Utah where her family owns and operates a farm and cattle ranch, and speaking Italian in which she became fluent as she served a 1.5-year mission trip in Milan, Italy. Karen plays an Italian 1926 violin made by Jago Peternella.