The Faculty Artist Series presents Oleh Kyrsa, Professor of Violin, along with Barry Snyder, Professor Emeritus of Piano, in the second of three total concerts this Spring. The upcoming concerts will be performed on Saturday, February 8; and Friday, March 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music. Kyrsa and Snyder will be collaborating for these three concerts throughout the Spring 2020 semester to perform the complete violin sonatas of Beethoven in celebration of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary in 2020.
The Ukrainian-American violinist Oleh Krysa is long esteemed in the former USSR as a distinguished soloist, chamber musician and teacher. A prominent student of David Oistrakh, Krysa won major prizes in such international competitions as the Wieniawski (1962), Tchaikovsky (1966), and Montreal (1969), and was outright winner of the Paganini Competition (1963).
Oleh Krysa began his teaching career as chairman of the Violin Department at the Kiev Conservatory. In 1973 he took the same position at the Gnesins Musical and Pedagogical Institute in Moscow and, two years later, returned to the Moscow Conservatory as Professor of Violin, where he remained until 1988. Currently he is Professor of Violin at the Eastman School of Music, and was a Visiting Professor at Tokyo University of Arts in 2009. He is also an Honored Professor at Lviv Music Academy (Ukraine) and an Honored Member of the Japanese String Teachers Association.
In March 2016, Oleh Krysa was elected a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. Established in 1996, the Academy’s members are distinguished specialists of professional artistry. As a Foreign Member, Oleh Krysa will give master classes, present concerts and recitals, and create and develop musical projects.
The artistic association “World of Classical Music” founded the Oleh Krysa International Violin Competition to honor Professor Krysa. The first competition was held October 25 to November 3, 2013, in Lviv. The Oleh Krysa International Violin Competition will take place in Lviv from October 20 to 31.
In October and in December of 2015, Oleh Krysa presented the cycle “The Development of Violin Concerto” in four ambitious concerts with the Symphony Orchestra of Lviv Philharmonia. The programs for these concerts consisted of concertos by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Prokofiev, Schnittke, Tchaikovsky, Skoryk, Szymanowski, and Shostakovich.
Oleh Krysa is also a champion of contemporary music, and has worked closely with Alfred Schnittke, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Krzsyzstof Penderecki, Vyacheslav Artyomov, Sydney Hodkinson, Virko Baley, Myroslav Skoryk, Valentin Silvestrov, Yevhen Stankovych, and Larry Sitsky. He has premiered a number of their works, and many of them have been written for and dedicated to him.
Barry Snyder received bachelor’s and master’s degrees, as well as the Performer’s Certificate and the Artist’s Diploma, from the Eastman School of Music. He studied piano with Wilbur Hoffman, Vladimir Sokoloff, and Cécile Genhart, and accompanying with Brooks Smith and John Celentano, and was a triple prize winner in the 1966 Van Cliburn International Competition: Silver Medal, Pan American Union Award and the Chamber Music Prize.
Besides his innumerable solo recitals and chamber music collaborations with several generations of Eastman artists, Barry Snyder has also performed with Herman Prey, Ani Kavafian, Jan DeGaetani, Raphael Hillyer, as a member of Eastman Trio (1976-82), and Meadowmount Trio (1989-90), and with the Cleveland, Curtis, Purcell, and Composer’s Quartets. He has performed with conductors such as Robert Shaw, Leopold Stokowski, David Zinman, Sixten Ehrling, and Arthur Fiedler. He has appeared with such orchestras as the Detroit, Houston, Baltimore, and Singapore Symphonies, the Rochester and Japan Philharmonic Orchestras, Krakow and Brno Radio Symphonies, Toronto Chamber Orchestra, and the Aspen Summer Festival Orchestra. He has also given master classes throughout the world, chaired the jury for the World International Piano Competition in Cincinnati, and was a jury member for the Glasgow Young Artists Competition.
Barry Snyder has premiered concertos and solo works by Sydney Hodkinson, Verne Reynolds, Toshio Hosokawa, Augusta Read Thomas, David Liptak, Carter Pann, Alec Wilder, and John LaMontaine. Snyder has participated in more than forty solo, concerto, and chamber recordings; his recording of the complete cello and piano works of Fauré with Steven Doane on Bridge Records was awarded the Diapason D’or.
He taught at Eastman from 1970 until his retirement in 2017, and is listed in the book The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the United States. In 2018, he accepted an Adjunct Professor position at New York University. Barry Snyder received the University of Rochester’s Edward Peck Curtis Award for Teaching Excellence in 1975, and was named “Musician of the Year” by Mu Phi Epsilon in 1987.
The Faculty Artist Series is generously supported by Patricia Ward-Baker.
Tickets for Eastman’s Faculty Artist Series are $10 for the general public and free to current Season Subscribers and UR ID holders. Tickets can be purchased at the Eastman Theatre Box Office, 433 Eastman Main Street, 9:30AM – 2:30PM., Monday-Friday; by phone (585) 274-3000; or online at http://eastmantheatre.org
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About Eastman School of Music:
The Eastman School of Music was founded in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman (1854-1932), founder of Eastman Kodak Company. It was the first professional school of the University of Rochester. Mr. Eastman’s dream was that his school would provide a broad education in the liberal arts as well as superb musical training. The current dean is Jamal Rossi, appointed in 2014.
More than 900 students are enrolled in the Collegiate Division of the Eastman School of Music—about 500 undergraduates and 400 graduate students. They come from almost every state, and approximately 23 percent are from other countries. They are taught by a faculty comprised of more than 130 highly regarded performers, composers, conductors, scholars, and educators. They are Pulitzer Prize winners, Grammy winners, Emmy winners, Guggenheim Fellows, ASCAP Award recipients, published authors, recording artists, and acclaimed musicians who have performed in the world’s greatest concert halls. Each year, Eastman’s students, faculty members, and guest artists present more than 900 concerts to the Rochester community.