A Tribute to Virko Baley | An 85th Birthday Celebration

MUSIC AT THE INSTITUTE and SHEVCHENKO SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY

present

A Tribute to Virko Baley
An 85th Birthday Celebration

Virko Baley is a Ukrainian-American composer in residence, distinguished professor of music, and Jacyk Fellow at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. He serves as co-director of NEON, an annual composers’ conference at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and was the Music Director and Conductor of the Nevada Symphony Orchestra from 1980-1995. A recipient of a 2007 Grammy® Award as recording co-producer for TNC Recordings and the prestigious 2008 Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Baley’s accolades are numerous.

Throughout his career, Baley has tirelessly worked to disseminate accurate information about Ukrainian composers in the United States. He was awarded the Shevchenko Prize for Music in 1996 by the Ukrainian government and has authored numerous articles on various musical topics. He has contributed to both the New Grove Opera and the New Grove 2000 Dictionary of Music on the subject of Ukrainian music. Together with Ivan Karabyts, Baley founded the first international music festival in Ukraine, the Kyiv Music Fest. He co-produced and composed the music for Yuri Illienko’s film Swan Lake: The Zone, which won two top prizes at Cannes in 1990, and for Illienko’s last film, A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa. He has led the Kyiv Camerata in recordings of over fifteen CDs of orchestral music by composers ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Valentyn Sylvestrov and Yevhen Stankovych, and has worked with the Shevchenko Opera Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine.

Program – Music of Virko Baley
Emily Dickinson Songbook I for soprano and piano
Journey After Loves for baritone and piano
Persona II, “Borys Liatoshynsky” for Solo Clarinet (B-Flat Clarinet)
Dreamtime Suite for clarinet, violin and piano

Performed by
Corrine Byrne, soprano
Thomas Meglioranza, baritone
Reiko Uchida, piano
Victoria  Luperi, clarinet
Solomiya Ivakhiv, violin