karine vann

Originally from the DC area, Karine Vann is a sought-after music educator and pianist now based in the Napa Valley. A graduate of the Jacobs School of Music (student of Reiko Neriki) and the University of Oxford (MSt, Musicology, student of Dr. Eric Clarke), she has a background as both a performer and a researcher/writer. Her writings on Armenian music and culture have been translated into multiple languages and published in Armenia’s Journal of Social Sciences Լրաբեր, Smithsonian.com, Yerevan Magazine, Hetq, and The Armenian Weekly (where she served as editor). Her writings on environmental topics have been featured on Waste Dive, Ensia, The Counter, and Civil Eats. 

Karine has participated in musical collaborations that span genres and continents. As the keyboard player for the band 1243K, she participated in One Caucasus, a peace building festival in Georgia which brought together Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani musicians. Her most recent project is with Lebanese-Armenian vocalist and duduk player, Khatchadour Khatchadourian, called Barbar Band, which fuses their backgrounds in traditional folk, classical and jazz idioms to create authentic, new arrangements of Armenian folk music. The duo has sold out shows across the Bay area. As a classical musician, Karine enjoys hosting local community performances, like her collaboration with the Vacaville Museum in presenting the piano rendition of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

In 2022, Karine founded Janapar Piano Studio, where for years she was in very high demand as a teacher of music theory and piano technique to pre-college children as young as 5. She is certified as an instructor of Russian Method piano technique through The Gorin Institute and utilizes the Tales of A Musical Journey curriculum in her private teaching. In her years as a teacher and mother, she has developed special expertise in the area of music for early childhood, and has led a longstanding weekly music class for children ages 2 to 5 at Nature’s Way Montessori since 2022. Currently, she serves as the music and choir teacher at the Stone Bridge School, a Waldorf-inspired charter based in Napa where her two sons, Tigran and Levon, are also students.

Karine’s studies in jazz span over a decade. She is a former student of Wade Beach, and the recipient of the Donna Wood Music Teacher’s Scholarship at Interplay Jazz & Arts in Meriden, NH for 2025 and 2026. She has learned from jazz piano masters like Armen Donelian, Bob Hallahan, and James Francies, and received vocal coaching from talents like Dominique Eade and John Prioulx. She sings in English, Armenian, French, and Russian, and also plays accordion.