Susan Starr
Encyclopedia
Biography
She began her studies with Eleanor SokoloffEleanor Sokoloff
Eleanor Sokoloff is an American pianist and famous pedagogue of piano. She is now in her eighth decade of teaching on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music....
at age four. She later entered the Curtis Institute of Music
Curtis Institute of Music
The Curtis Institute of Music is a conservatory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that offers courses of study leading to a performance Diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in Opera, and Professional Studies Certificate in Opera. According to statistics compiled by U.S...
, where she studied with Rudolf Serkin
Rudolf Serkin
Rudolf Serkin , was a Bohemian-born pianist.-Life and early career:Serkin was born in Eger, Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire to a Russian-Jewish family....
until her graduation in 1961. She shared a 1962 Silver Medal, at the 1962 Tchaikovsky Competition.
Starr performed on more than 50 occasions with the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
, since her debut at age six, an engagement that marked her as the youngest soloist to ever appear with a major orchestra. She has also been heard with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival...
, Moscow State Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra as well as the orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, St. Louis, Denver, Houston, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Memphis, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Montreal, New Jersey, New Orleans, and Vancouver, among others. In 1977 Starr performed at the White House at the invitation of President Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
.
Among the eminent conductors who have chosen Starr as soloist throughout her career are Charles Dutoit
Charles Dutoit
Charles Édouard Dutoit, is a Swiss conductor, particularly noted for his interpretations of French and Russian 20th century music...
, Aldo Ceccato
Aldo Ceccato
Aldo Ceccato is an Italian conductor. He has worked as assistant to Sergiu Celibidache and was music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1973 until 1977. He was music director of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra from 1985 until 1990...
, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos is a Spanish conductor and composer.Frühbeck studied violin, piano, and composition at the conservatories of Bilbao and Madrid...
, Erich Kunzel
Erich Kunzel
Erich Kunzel, Jr. was an American orchestra conductor. Called the "Prince of Pops" by the Chicago Tribune, he performed with a number of leading pops and symphony orchestras, especially the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra , which he led for over 44 years.-Early life and career:Kunzel was born to...
, Raymond Leppard
Raymond Leppard
Raymond "Def" Leppard, CBE is a British conductor and harpsichordist.He was born in London and grew up in Bath, where he was educated at the City of Bath Boys' School, now known as the Beechen Cliff School...
, Sir Neville Marriner, Gennady Rozhdestvensky
Gennady Rozhdestvensky
Gennady Nikolayevich Rozhdestvensky is a Russian conductor.-Biography:Rozhdestvensky was born in Moscow. His parents were the noted conductor and pedagogue Nikolai Anosov and soprano Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya...
, Maxim Shostakovich
Maxim Shostakovich
Maxim Dmitrievich Shostakovich is a Russian conductor and pianist. He was the second child of Dmitri Shostakovich and Nina Varzar.Since 1975, he has conducted and popularised many of his father's lesser-known works....
, Joseph Silverstein
Joseph Silverstein
Joseph Silverstein is an American violinist and conductor.As a youth, Silverstein studied with his father, Bernard Silverstein, who was a public school music teacher...
, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
Stanisław Skrowaczewski is an internationally known classical conductor and composer. He was born in Lvov and became best known for his work with the Minnesota Orchestra....
, and Leonard Slatkin
Leonard Slatkin
Leonard Edward Slatkin is an American conductor and composer.-Early life and education:Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father Felix Slatkin was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet,...
as well as the late conductors Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, Arthur Fiedler
Arthur Fiedler
Arthur Fiedler was a long-time conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a symphony orchestra that specializes in popular and light classical music. With a combination of musicianship and showmanship, he made the Boston Pops one of the best-known orchestras in the country...
, Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
, Max Rudolf, Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw (conductor)
Robert Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Shaw received 14 Grammy awards, four ASCAP awards for service to contemporary music, the first Guggenheim Fellowship...
, and William Steinberg
William Steinberg
William Steinberg was a German-American conductor.- Biography :Steinberg was born Hans Wilhelm Steinberg in Cologne, Germany. He displayed early talent as a violinist, pianist, and composer, conducting his own choral/ orchestral composition at age 13...
. More recently she has performed under the baton of conductors such as Kenneth Schermerhorn
Kenneth Schermerhorn
Kenneth Dewitt Schermerhorn was an American composer and orchestra conductor, most notably for the Nashville Symphony.-Biography:Schermerhorn was born in Schenectady, New York, where he studied clarinet, violin, and trumpet in school. At age 14, he forged a baptismal certificate to appear older so...
, Leif Bjaland
Leif Bjaland
Leif Bjaland was named the artistic director and conductor of the Florida West Coast Symphony in 1997.He is also serving his 16th season as the artistic director of the Waterbury Symphony in Waterbury, Connecticut...
, Emil de Cou
Emil de Cou
Emil de Cou, ConductorEmil de Cou is an American conductor who became associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in September 2003 and has been an active participant in a wide range of NSO performances and events since his debut at Wolf Trap in 2000...
, Gerhardt Zimmerman, George Hanson
George Hanson
George Hanson is a former American basketball coach. Hanson was the head coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers for the 1970-71 season, where he finished 11-13 and led the squad to a 5th place finish. Hanson resigned after one season and was replaced by Bill Musselman. Hanson played for the...
, Alastair Neale, Richard Westerfield
Richard Westerfield
Richard Westerfield is an American conductor. He has served as Associate Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and has led orchestras such as the Brown University Orchestra, the Harrisburg Symphony, and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra....
, Miguel Harth-Bedoya
Miguel Harth-Bedoya
Miguel Harth-Bedoya is a Peruvian conductor, currently Music Director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra , a position he has held since 2000.He was born in Lima, Peru...
, Michael Christie
Michael Christie (conductor)
Michael Christie is an American conductor. He graduated from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music with a bachelor’s degree in trumpet performance...
, and William Eddins
William Eddins
William Eddins is an American pianist and conductor. He is the Music Director of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.Eddins started playing piano at age 5 after his parents purchased a piano at a garage sale...
.
Starr's active international career has taken her on three tours of the Soviet Union, more than a dozen trips to the Far East and South America, as well as to Belgium, England, Germany, Greece, Italy and Sweden, and Hong Kong. Starr returned to Moscow later in 1994 as one of the judges of the competition. Over the span of her career, she has judged many international competitions. She continues to perform and teach at the Sarasota Music Festival
Sarasota Music Festival
Sarasota Music Festival is an American classical music festival held annually during the month of June in Sarasota, Florida under the sponsorship of the Sarasota Orchestra. The Festival was founded in 1965 by conductor Paul Wolfe who remained director of the festival through the summer of 2006....
, where she has done so for the past 20 years. In the United States, she has also made appearances at the Ravinia, Chautauqua, Mann Center for the Performing Arts
Mann Center for the Performing Arts
The Mann Center for The Performing Arts is a 14,000 seat summer musical venue located in Philadelphia's West Fairmount Park. The venue operates as both an indoor performance hall and an outdoor music venue...
, Grand Teton Music Festival
Grand Teton Music Festival
Located in Jackson Hole at the gateway to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, the Grand Teton Music Festival offers seven weeks of classical music concerts each summer. The Festival Orchestra is the centerpiece of Grand Teton Music Festival's programming...
, and Ann Arbor May Festivals.
Among her engagements in the 2004-2005 season are performances of F. Mendelssohn Piano Concerto and Sergei Rachmaninov-Paganini Variations with the Augusta Symphony; Schumann Piano Concerto with the Curtis Institute Orchestra in Kimmel Center's Verizon Hall; Shostakovich Concerto No. 1 with the Philadelphia Classical Symphony and S. Rachmaninov-Paganini Variations with Rutgers University Orchestra in Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall.
Currently, Starr is a Distinguished Professor at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
.
She has appeared on Performance Today
Performance Today
Performance Today is a Peabody Award-winning classical music radio show, currently hosted by Fred Child. It is the most listened-to daily classical music radio program in the United States, with 1.2 million listeners on 237 stations...
.
Family
Starr has 2 children, Lori Amada, and Eric Amada. Lori followed her mother's footsteps with an invitation to the White House followed by a performance for President Ronald Reagan. Lori Amada has performed as french horn soloist with orchestras around the world on more than fifty occasions, and as an orchestral musician has received high praise from conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, and Aldo Ceccato. Miss Amada was graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music, the third generation to attend the prestigious school. Eric has his own Artist Management company. Susan's father, Isadore Schwartz, died in 1981 at the age of 85. He started this long line of musicians. Isadore attended the Curtis Institute of Music and later became the Principal Second Violinist of the Philadelphia OrchestraPhiladelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
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Recordings
- Bach: French Suite No. 5; English Suite No. 3; Partitas Nos. 1 & 2, Susan Starr, May 11, 1999, Hallmark, ASIN: B00000IGJF
- Rachmaninoff; R. Strauss Cello Sonatas, Boeckheler, Susan Starr, June 20, 1996, Mastersound, ASIN: B00008FER6
- Mendelssohn: Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66 / Tchaikovsky: Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano in A minor, Op. 50 - The Starr-Kim-Boeckheler Trio, Starr-Kim-Boeckheler Piano Trio, Chin Kim, June 20, 1996, Mastersound, ASIN: B00008FER3
- Premiere Chamber Works / Sara Lambert Bloom, Susan Starr, Sara Lambert Bloom, Julius Baker, 06/20/1995, Centaur Records, Catalog #2217