True Journey is Return: From Art to Science to (Epistemological) Anarchy

In The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin writes, “You can go home again... so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.” Halfway through life, Corey Cerovsek has roved the deeps of music and mathematics, strayed about the globe as a concert violinist, played at being a technologist, and leapt into nomadism, tending to small flames of teaching and tradition. Now he returns to his native city, offering an interim report—on math as poetry, music as science, art as sacrament, science as ritual, and logic as art—that is skeptical about knowledge, intelligence, meritocracy, and cultural supremacy; dubious of dogma; alert to the nagging transparency of his own beliefs. Bach will be served.

Born in Vancouver, Corey Cerovsek began playing the violin at the age of five. After early studies with Charmian Gadd and Richard Goldner, he graduated from the University of Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music with a gold medal for the highest marks in strings. The same year, he was accepted as a student by Josef Gingold and enrolled at Indiana University. Concurrently he studied piano with Enrica Cavallo, frequently appearing in concert performing on both instruments. In recital, he has performed throughout the world, including frequently at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theatre and the Frick Collection (New York), the Place des Arts (Montréal), the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra “Debut Series,” Wigmore Hall (London) and the Théâtre du Châtelet and Salle Gaveau (Paris). His recording of the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas with pianist Paavali Jumppanen for the Claves label, received numerous awards and his Corigliano Violin Sonata, with Andrew Russo on the Black Box label, was nominated for a 2006 Grammy Award. Corey performs on the “Milanollo” Stradivarius of 1728. He is cofounder and CTO of a technology company specializing in medical education.