Stephen Wyrczynski
Viola
After a year of a visiting professorship, Stephen Wyrczynski was appointed Professor of Music(Viola) at the Jacobs School of Music in 2010. A member of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1992-2011, he began violin studies at age eight and eventually switched to the viola at age sixteen. In 1983 he began viola studies with Kim Kashkashian and later with Karen Tuttle at the Peabody Conservatory where he became her teaching assistant. He went on to receive his bachelor degree in 1988 from Juilliard where he continued to be her assistant. He was then accepted at the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with Joseph de Pasquale, then Principal Violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He earned a diploma there in 1991.
He keeps an active teaching schedule. He is on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory and the Aspen Music Festival and School. In addition to teaching private lessons at both institutions, he conducts seminars in orchestral audition repertoire and techniques. He has taught at the New World Symphony in Miami, Florida and Mannes College of Music in New York where he does quarterly coachings in orchestral repertoire. He has previously taught orchestral studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, the National Orchestral Institute, and the New York State Summer School for Orchestral Studies. He has recently been appointed visiting Professor of Viola at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University for the 2009- 2010 academic year.
As a chamber musician, he has played in many of the North America’s celebrated venues. He has had performances at the Aspen Music Festival, CO; Le Domaine Forget, QC; the New Port Music Festival, RI; the Grand Teton Music Festival, WY; Tanglewood, Lenox, MA; Kingston Music Festival, RI; the Casal’s Music Festival, PR; El Paso Pro Musica, TX; and the Apollo Chamber Players, Denver,CO. He also has collaborated in chamber music with artists such as Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Pamela Frank, Edgar Meyer, and Dawn Upshaw.
