JORJA FLEEZANIS

Jorja Fleezanis has been Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra since September 1989, assuming that position after eight years with the San Francisco Symphony as Associate Concertmaster. Her musical activities regularly take her to teaching venues such as Indiana University, the Boston Conservatory of Music and the Round Top International Festival Institute. She has had two major solo works commissioned for her by the Minnesota Orchestra, the John Adams Violin Concerto and the Ikon of Eros by John Tavener, the latter recorded on Reference Records. The complete violin sonatas of Beethoven with the French fortepianist Cyril Huvé were released last year on the Cyprés label. Other recordings include Aaron Jay Kernis’s Brilliant Sky, Infinite Sky on CRI, commissioned for her by the Schubert Club of St Paul, Minnesota. Her performance of the première of Nicholas Maw’s Sonata for Solo Violin, commissioned for her by Minnesota Public Radio, was broadcast on Public Radio International’s Saint Paul Sunday Morning in 1998, and in 1999 she gave the British première at the Chester Summer Festival. In 1998 she was the violin soloist in the American première of Britten’s recently discovered Double Concerto for Violin and Viola. Jorja Fleezanis has been an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota since 1990.