Viola Recital & Masterclass with Stephen Wyrczynski

Stephen Wyrczynski was recently appointed Professor of Viola at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. He has taught at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University since 2010. He is an Artist Faculty at the Aspen Music Festival and School since 2006. He was a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra for 18 years, joining them in 1992.

Professor Wyrczynski regularly performs as a soloist and chamber musician. He prioritizes faculty-student collaborations. One such partnership, which he co-founded with the late violinist Jorja Fleezanis, was an exploration of music from the Second Viennese School, in which faculty and students together performed music by Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. The inaugural concerts took place in a gallery at the Indiana University Art Museum which has a celebrated art collection. Here, the audience was able to consider the relationship of the music to exhibited works by Wassily Kandinsky, a personal friend of Schoenberg. Works performed in this series include Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht Op. 4, String Quartets 1 Op. 7, 2 Op. 10, 3 Op. 30, 4 Op. 37, Ode to Napoleon Op. 41, and the String Trio Op. 45. Also performed were Alban Berg’s Op. 3 String Quartet, Lyric Suite (1925-26), and Anton Webern Bagatelles Op. 9.

In other chamber music collaborations, he has performed with such artists as Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Pamela Frank, Edgar Meyer, Vladimir Feltsman, Marietta Simpson, and Dawn Upshaw. He has played in many of the North America’s celebrated venues. He has had performances at Le Doma ine 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.

Professor Wyrczynski considers his teaching a direct result of his own relationship to performing, practicing, and listening. He approaches each student as an individual personality and potential artist. Teaching a student about the great privilege it is to serve the composers of our repertoire is one of the best ways for the students to gain ownership of their musical training. He encourages students to ask probing questions and be musically curious beyond their own instrument. He has his students explore musical context rather than segregating technique from music making.

In addition to his residency at the Aspen Music Festival and School, he participates annually as an instructor at the Karen Tuttle Coordination Workshop. He has taught at the New World Symphony in Miami, Florida, and Mannes College of Music in New York where he led quarterly coachings in orchestral repertoire. He has also taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, the National Orchestral Institute, and the New York State Summer School for Orchestral Studies.

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’s degree in 1988 from Juilliard where he continued to be her assistant. He continued his studies 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.

Most recently he has completed a transcription of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring with pianist Aram Arakelyan. This rewarding multi-year project has been to rethink this 1913 modernist work for large orchestra and transform it into a virtuoso viola and piano duo while keeping its original rhythmic and melodic integrity and form. Professors Wyrczynski and Arakelyan gave the world premiere in the fall of 2024 and recorded it for Azica Records in the summer of 2025 with producer Alan Bise. A printed edition is published by Songburd Music.