A prize winner in the British Contemporary Piano Competition, Karis Stretton performs as a soloist and ensemble musician, focusing on music from the early twentieth century to the present day. She was a UK finalist for the European Music for Youth Piano Prize, for which she made her Purcell Room debut, and she has given concerts in many of the UK's principal venues, including St. John's Smith Square and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, as well as performing internationally. With an on-going interest in working with multimedia, such performances have included concerts at the Cultural Exchanges Festival (DMU Leicester), UHArts Mayfest and Transitio Mx Festival of Electronic Arts and Video, Mexico City. She composed the score for live piano for the award winning silent film Dogged, an experimental short written and directed by Jo Shaw (Red Crow Productions). As a recipient of the Sir Mark Turner Memorial Scholarship, she has been an artist in residence at the Banff Centre, Canada.

Taking her first piano lessons at the age of nine, Karis went on to receive a scholarship for entry to Birmingham Conservatoire where she studied piano with Malcolm Wilson. She graduated first class having won awards for her solo playing as well as her performances as a chamber musician. She then took piano lessons at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Susan Alexander Max, who remained her tutor for a number of years. In master-classes, Karis has worked with concert artists such as Martin Roscoe, Marjorie Clementi and Lambert Orkis.

Retaining a keen interest in contemporary works, Karis has collaborated with composers and groups in a variety of projects. Examples include performing with B.E.A.S.T. (Birmingham Electro-Acoustic Sound Theatre) to give the world première of Mike Vaughan’s Collective Memories; working with The Music Collection and Jean-Jaques Dünki, giving the UK première of the Swiss composer's keyboard quartet Tétraptéron; and on-stage performances of music for cello and piano specially commissioned for choreographer Charles Linehan's production of Rialto. She has recorded works by Andrew Hugill for the CD 'Pataphysical Piano as well as pieces by Cornelius Cardew, Howard Skempton, Dave Smith and Gabriel Jackson for a CD of solo piano works, Images and Impressions, released by UH Recordings.

Karis is also an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and an associate lecturer for the Open University. She gives workshops for educational institutes and past events have included performance master-classes in schools and universities as well as lecture-recitals for WEA, in Derby Cathedral, and Birkbeck College, at Wigmore Hall.

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