First Violin

Jorja Fleezanis

concertmaster
Elbert L. Carpenter Chair

Jorja Fleezanis has been concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra since September 1989, having assumed that position after eight years with the San Francisco Symphony as associate concertmaster. A frequent soloist with the Orchestra, Fleezanis has performed the Elgar, Weill and Berg Violin Concertos, Bernstein’s Serenade and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons in recent years. In April 2009 she performed the First Violin Concerto of Karol Szymanowski at concerts conducted by Gilbert Varga. At the end of the current subscription season she will leave the Orchestra to become professor of music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Last season Fleezanis performed the Elgar Violin Concerto with the Oregon East Symphony. Also during 2007-08 she gave recitals with pianist Garrick Ohlsson and cellist Michael Grebanier in San Francisco and Napa Valley; performed and gave master classes with her recital partner Karl Paulnack at Moravian College and the Boston Conservatory; and taught at the New World Symphony and Indiana University. In summer 2008 she performed at Italy’s Trasimeno Music Festival in concerts led by pianist Angela Hewitt, and returned for her sixth season at the Music@Menlo Festival.

The Minnesota Orchestra has commissioned two major solo works for Fleezanis, the John Adams Violin Concerto and Ikon of Eros by John Tavener, the latter recorded on Reference Records. Her recording of the complete violin sonatas of Beethoven with the French fortepianist Cyril Huvé was released in 2003 on the Cyprés label. Other recordings include Aaron Jay Kernis’ Brilliant Sky, Infinite Sky on CRI, commissioned for Fleezanis by the Schubert Club, and, with Garrick Ohlsson, Stefan Wolpe’s Violin Sonata for Koch International. Her performance of the premiere of Nicholas Maw’s Sonata for Solo Violin, commissioned for her by Minnesota Public Radio, was broadcast on St. Paul Sunday in 1998, and in 1999 she gave the British premiere at the Chester Summer Festival. In 1998, Fleezanis was the violin soloist in the American premiere of Britten’s recently discovered Double Concerto for Violin and Viola.

Fleezanis has been an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota since 1990. She is frequently a visiting teacher at Indiana University and the New World Symphony, and has been on the faculty of the Round Top International Festival Institute since 1991. She has been an artist and teacher at the Music@Menlo Festival since its debut season in 2003.

Fleezanis plays a violin made in 1700 by the Venetian maker Matteo Goffriller that was donated to the Minnesota Orchestra for her use only. She is married to the musicologist, lecturer and writer Michael Steinberg.