Violinist Igor Karsko is active as a soloist, chamber player, and orchestral musician. He has spent much of his career in Switzerland, and in 2019, he was named the artistic director of Camerata Zürich.

Karsko was born in Slovakia, then part of Czechoslovakia, in 1969. He studied at the Košice Conservatory in the eastern part of the country and then moved to Prague for further work with Jiri Tomasek at the Prague Music Academy, graduating with honors. He also took conducting and chamber music lessons in the Czech capital. Karsko's move to the West came as Communism was breaking up in 1991, when violinist Yehudi Menuhin invited him to study at his Menuhin Academy in Gstaad, Switzerland. There, he took lessons from Menuhin and Alberto Lysy. Karsko joined the latter's Camerata Lysy and also performed with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in Vienna under conductor Claudio Abbado. In 1993, Karsko became concertmaster of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. He also joined the Serenade String Trio, which won a pair of international chamber music competitions in 1991, and in 2000 recorded an album of trios by Françaix, Penderecki, and Martinu.

Karsko toured widely, giving recitals and participating in chamber music and concerto performances across Europe. He settled in Lucerne and joined the faculty at the Musikhochschule Luzern there, focusing increasingly often on historical performance practice as his career evolved. In 2005, Karsko served as concertmaster of the Baroque orchestra La Scintilla, which toured the U.S. with mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli. He co-founded the Baroque orchestra La Gioconda, which has accompanied operatic productions and is a co-director of the chamber music festival Convergence (Konvergencie). After serving as guest concertmaster of the Zürich Chamber Orchestra and the orchestra Les Musiciens du Louvre under leader Marc Minkowski, Karsko became concertmaster of the venerable Camerata Zürich string orchestra. In 2021, he released his first recording as leader of that group, Leoš Janácek: On an Overgrown Path, on the ECM label. ~ James Manheim, Rovi