Master Series Concerts & Tickets
Guest Artist Michael Swan
Master Series 2, November 15, 2008Michael Swan was born and raised in Saskatoon, where he studied violin with Dorothy Overholt, Norma Lee Bisha, Mark Reedman and Robert Klose, receiving the ARCT Gold Medal for Violin Performance in 1979. He went on to study at the University of Western Ontario under Yuri Mazurkevich, where he received the Hudeo Saito Prize for academic achievement in two consecutive years. In 1984, he graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. There he studied with Aaron Rosand, perhaps the last of the great violin virtuosos in the Romantic tradition rooted in the late nineteenth century. At Curtis, he also had the unique opportunity to work under the legendary Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache.
Since 1984, he has been concertmaster of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. In addition to orchestral, chamber and solo performances on the violin, he also devotes himself to composition. He has conducting appearances and several compositions to his credit, and has been featured on CBC radio both as a violinist and as a composer. In 2007, Michael’s symphony ‘Via Dolorosa’ was performed by the Saskatoon Symphony as part of the Master Series at TCU Place.