MMTA Webinars

Violinist Solomia Soroka, born in L’viv, Ukraine, made her solo debut at age 10, playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the L’viv Philharmonic Orchestra. Trained in Ukraine and the United States, she combines the best of both worlds. Soroka is an advocate of unknown and lesser played American and Ukrainian music. She has appeared as soloist and as chamber musician at concerts and festivals in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Italy, Czech Republic, Ukraine, USA, Canada, China, Korea, and Taiwan. She is praised for being “a truly wonderful musician” (The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand), her “technical mastery…ferocity, light and mystic lyricism” (Daily Freeman, New York), and as one who “plays with great warmth and authority” (BBC Music Magazine). She has performed with orchestras in Ukraine, Australia, and the United States. Soroka is a recording artist for Naxos and Toccata Records. She made nine premier recordings, including music by American composers William Bolcom, Arthur Hartmann, Ukrainian Myroslav Skoryk, Mykola Lysenko, Yevhen Stankovych, and Holocaust composers Leone Sinigaglia and Bernhard Sekles. Solomia Soroka is currently a violin professor at Goshen College, Indiana, and an interim professor at the Bowling Green State University. She is the artistic director of the Sherer Violin/Piano Competition for Young Musicians, and the Artistic Director of the music series “ Musical Evenings at the Ukrainian Museum” in Detroit. Ms. Soroka has served on the faculty of chamber music at the Kiev Conservatory, and has taught at the Music Fest Perugia in Italy, the Castleman Quartet Program, Pilsen Summer Academy, Schlern Music Festival, and the Vivace International Music Festival. She studied with Hersh Heifetz, Bohodar Kotorovych, Liudmyla Zvirko and Charles Castleman. Website information:www.solomiasoroka.com

Arthur Greene studied at Juilliard under Martin Canin. He now teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. These are some of the press accolades he has received: “A profound musician” – The Washington Post; “A masterful pianist” • The New York Times; “Intoxicating appeal” – Mainichi Daily News, Japan; “A romantic splendor of sound-colors” – Ruhr Nachrichten; “Stellar Scriabinist” American Record Guide. Arthur Greene won first prizes in the William Kapell and Gina Bachauer International Piano Competitions, and was a top laureate at the Busoni International Competition. He performed the complete solo piano works of Johannes Brahms in a series of six programs in Boston, and recorded the Complete Etudes of Alexander Scriabin for Supraphon. He has performed the 10 Sonata Cycle of Alexander Scriabin in many important international venues, including multimedia presentations with Symbolist artworks. He has made many recordings together with his wife, the violinist Solomia Soroka, for Naxos and Toccata Classics, including the Violin-Piano Sonatas of William Bolcom. His recording of piano works of the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko has recently been released on Amazon. Greene has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco, Utah and National Symphonies, the Czech National Symphony, the Tokyo Symphony, and many others. He has played recitals in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Moscow Rachmaninov Hall, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Lisbon Sao Paulo Opera House, Hong Kong City Hall and concert houses in Shanghai and Beijing. He toured Japan and Korea many times. He was an Artistic Ambassador to Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia for the United States Information Agency. At the University of Michigan Mr. Greene has won the Harold Haugh Award for Excellence in Studio Teaching, and in 2007, he and his students presented a recital series of the complete solo works of Chopin in nine concerts; they organized along with the performances a Chopin symposium with presentations by noted musicologists. His current and former students include prizewinners in international competitions, and his former students hold important teaching posts throughout the United States. He is a frequent judge of piano competitions, most recently the Isangyun Competition in Korea.