Dr. Gwendolyn Mok

Currently the Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at San Jose State University School of Music and Dance, Dr. Gwendolyn Mok began her career in piano at the Juilliard School of Music.  She later attended Yale University, where she completed her undergraduate studies, and then State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she earned a Doctorate.  Gwendolyn Mok went on to win several piano competitions.

A native New Yorker, Dr. Mok has appeared in many of the world’s leading concert halls including The Barbican, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts.  She is frequently invited to play and record with major international orchestras, most notably The London Symphony, The Hong Kong Philharmonic and The Residentie Orkest of The Hague.

Dr. Mok is considered one of the leading experts in the piano music of French composer Maurice Ravel.  In 1994, the French Ministry of Culture awarded her a grant to study with French pianist Vlado Perlemuter for one year.  He had been a student of Ravel’s and, in his 90th year, Perlemuter chose Dr. Mok to be the last student on whom he would bestow his knowledge of Ravel.  In 1927, Perlemuter sat at the keyboard of Ravel’s Erard grand piano and worked his way through Ravel’s entire oeuvre alongside the composer.   Since 1995, Dr. Mok has been performing Ravel’s works in recital and was invited to teach these works at the Royal College of Music, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, The Dartington International Summer School in Devon and The San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  Her highly acclaimed (2001) debut CD with The Philharmonia of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major (released on the Cala label) was nominated for an Alternative Edison award in the concerto category.  For another CD, Ravel Revealed (released in 2002, the same year Perlemuter passed away), Dr. Mok was recorded playing the complete solo piano works of Ravel on an 1875 Erard piano.  This CD received critical acclaim and is regularly broadcast in the United States and in England on the BBC.

Dr. Mok is also a recording artist for Nonesuch/Elektra, Musical Heritage Society, Cala Records and EMI.  She has performed and recorded with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Group for Contemporary Music, and the Empyrean Ensemble, and can be heard on several movie soundtrack recordings of music by French composer Maurice Jarre.  Her CD (released in 2001) of Saint Saen’s Africa-Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra, with the London Philharmonic, garnered much attention and is broadcast frequently.

Dr. Mok was the director of INFORMANCE!, a music program which benefited 400 children in East London’s public schools.

Concerts featuring Dr. Mok: