Join us for a senior recital featuring the incredible pianist and Columbia College senior, Raunak Kumar, on May 3rd at 4 PM at the Italian Academy.
Raunak Kumar is a violinist from Johns Creek, Georgia, now based in New York City. A student of Siwoo Kim, he balances his musical pursuits with studies in applied mathematics at Columbia University. Previously, he trained at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School under Soovin Kim and Detroit Symphony Concertmaster Robyn Bollinger while studying at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts.
Raunak has performed on prestigious stages worldwide, including the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, and Kulturpalast Dresden. He made his orchestral debut with the Georgia Youth Symphony and his Carnegie Hall debut at fourteen. A first-prize winner of the GMTA String Competition and a National YoungArts Foundation awardee, he has also led chamber ensembles to victory in competitions such as the Franklin Pond Chamber Music Competition and has been featured twice on NPR and WQXR.
As an orchestral musician, he has served as associate concertmaster for Camerata Notturna and Westside Chamber Players, in addition to freelancing. He has participated in festivals including Aspen, Bowdoin, and the Moritzburg Festival Academy. This summer, he will be a teaching artist at the Classical Music Institute in San Antonio before performing in Austria with Alpen KammerMusik.
During the pandemic, Raunak founded Give Bach, a virtual concert series that raised over $6,000 for COVID-19 relief through performances of solo Bach, uniting musicians from pre-college to professional levels—including Augustin Hadelich and Alexi Kenney. The initiative was recognized by the Atlanta Symphony and New England Conservatory. At Columbia, he established a pre-professional society to help musicians explore careers beyond performance, reflecting his commitment to mentorship and community.
To conclude his mathematical studies and scratch the itch for his love for commercial aviation, he and his colleagues delivered a mathematical capstone project on the Kutta-Joukowski theorem, focusing on optimal airfoil design. Raunak also worked with radiation oncology at the Columbia University Medical Center to determine patient survival probability with a causal inference machine learning model.
As he embarks on a new chapter as a Product Manager at Hubspot, Raunak remains dedicated to his musical career, freelancing as a chamber musician and performing with Camerata Notturna. Offstage, he enjoys exploring Urdu calligraphy, rock climbing at bouldering gyms, exploring new mathematical theorems, and savoring the culinary delights of New York City.
