Violinist Jorja Fleezanis will perform sonatas by Bach, Copland and Ives among other works at Ithaca College on Sunday, Nov. 6. Free and open to the public, the 4 p.m. concert will be held in Hockett Family Recital Hall in the Whalen Center for Music. She will be accompanied on piano by Karl Paulnack, dean of the School of Music.
Fleezanis was concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1989 to 2009 — the longest-tenured concertmaster in the orchestra’s history and only the second woman in the U.S. to hold the title of concertmaster in a major orchestra when appointed. Prior to Minnesota, she was associate concertmaster with the San Francisco Symphony for eight years.
A devoted teacher, Fleezanis is currently on the violin faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. She was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota for many years, and has held teaching and artist roles with a number of other institutions and organizations, including the Round Top International Festival Institute, Music@Menlo Festival, New World Symphony and Interlochen Academy and Summer Camp.
Fleezanis has had a number of works commissioned for her, including by the Minnesota Orchestra with the John Adams Violin Concerto. Her recording of the complete violin sonatas of Beethoven with the French fortepianist Cyril Huvé was released in 2003.
Paulnack, who joined the Ithaca College School of Music as dean in 2013, has been hailed by the Boston Globe as “a firecracker of a pianist.” In addition to being a regular recital partner with Fleezanis, he has accompanied vocal and instrumental soloists, chamber groups, orchestras, conductors and opera companies in well over a thousand concerts throughout the world.
The performance is part of the Louis K. Thaler Concert Violinist Series, established at Ithaca College by the Thaler/Howell Foundation in memory of Louis Thaler and to honor his lifelong love of the violin. The impetus for this gift was provided by Louis Thaler’s son Manley and his immediate family.