You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Donald Weilerstein’ tag.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family mourns the loss of Paul Phillips, who served as a member of the violin section from 1980 until 2020. He died March 27, 2024, following a long illness, at home in Chicago. Phillips was seventy-seven.
Born in Canton, Ohio, Paul Phillips began violin studies at the age of four. His father had played the violin as a youth and, when cleaning out a closet one day, he showed his son his old instrument and said, “Do you want to play the violin?” Paul innocently answered, “Yes!”—and so he did. One of Phillips’s first teachers was William Taylor (father of David Taylor, CSO assistant concertmaster) and he later attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying violin and chamber music with William Kroll of the Kroll Quartet and Endre Granat, assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra. He also received advanced coaching from Donald Weilerstein, first violinist of the Cleveland Quartet.
To earn his way through conservatory training, Phillips worked at a “fancy French restaurant,” where he developed a taste for fine cuisine, later preparing it for countless guests in his home and appreciating it in restaurants around the world.
In 1968, at the invitation of music director Izler Solomon, Phillips became a member of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, also regularly performing as a member of the Indianapolis String Quartet. Four years later in 1972, he joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, serving under music directors Sixten Ehrling, Aldo Ceccato, and Antal Doráti.
In 1980, eighth music director Sir Georg Solti invited Phillips to join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He served in the first violin section for forty years, retiring in June 2020. An avid chamber musician, Phillips performed regularly with flutist Donald Peck and pianist Melody Lord, as well as with the Gold Coast Chamber Players, Chicago Nine Ensemble, Ensemble à Corde, Chicago Pro Musica, and the Chicago Symphony String Quartet, along with Music of the Baroque. For many years, Phillips performed on a 1760 Joseph Gagliano violin.
Phillips was a longtime member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Alumni Association, serving most recently as the organization’s president.
“The CSO has always been the premier orchestra for me in the United States,” remarked Phillips at the time of his retirement in 2020. “One of my best friends in school was from Chicago, so we used to come to hear the Orchestra. We would sit there and look at each other and say, ‘oh my, I’ll never be in this orchestra!’ . . . As good as it was when I joined in 1980, at this point under Riccardo Muti, I think it’s the best it’s ever sounded . . . it’s continued to develop and evolve into this now elegant playing orchestra with such a beautiful sound.”
“I am profoundly saddened. I have lost a dear friend, a wonderful colleague, a marvelous person,” wrote Riccardo Muti, the CSO’s music director emeritus for life. “An exemplary artist and gentleman. I will never forget him.”
Paul Phillips is survived by his beloved husband Lloyd Palmiter, a sister Sheila Ghezzi, and a nephew. Details for services are pending.
Memorial gifts may be made to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, here.
This article also appears here.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family mourns the passing of Jorja Fleezanis, a member of the Orchestra’s violin section during the 1975-76 season and a passionate, lifelong educator. She passed away at her home in Lake Leelanau, Michigan on September 10, 2022, at the age of seventy.
Born on March 19, 1952, in Detroit, Michigan, Fleezanis began violin instruction at the age of eight, and as a teenager, attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts on scholarship and performed with the Detroit Youth Orchestra. She furthered her studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Fleezanis’s teachers included Mischa Mischakoff (CSO concertmaster from 1930 until 1937) in Chicago; Donald Weilerstein and David Cerone in Cleveland; and Walter Levin in Cincinnati. She was assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Concert Associates Orchestra, concertmaster of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, and concerto soloist with the University of Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra.
According to a 1975 program book biography, “Of Greek descent and the only musician in her family, Detroit-born Jorja decided to shoot for the Chicago post as the test of her talent. She made it to the finals on three separate occasion, each time told by Maestro Solti personally that he would like her to audition again. Even after her third audition, Solti still wavered, calling for some further test. So she sat in with the Orchestra for a week—comfortable, exhilarated, totally in her element. At last Sir Georg was convinced and hired her on the spot.”
Following her season in Chicago, she later served as associate concertmaster with the San Francisco Symphony. In 1989, she won the audition as concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, becoming (at the time) only the second woman in the United States to hold that title in a major orchestra when appointed. Fleezanis remained in that position for twenty years until her retirement in 2009, as the longest-tenured concertmaster in the Minnesota Orchestra’s history. During her time as concertmaster, two works were commissioned for her: John Adams’s Violin Concerto and John Tavener’s Ikon of Eros.
A passionate educator, Fleezanis was professor of orchestral studies at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music from 2009 until her retirement last year. She also served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota’s School of Music from 1990 until 2009; at the Round Top International Festival Institute in Texas from 1990 until 2007; artist-in-residence at the University of California, Davis; guest artist and teacher at the San Francisco Conservatory from 1981 to 1989; and artist and mentor at the Music@Menlo Festival from 2003 until 2010. Fleezanis had been teacher and coach with the New World Symphony since 1988 as well as on the faculty of the Music Academy of the West since 2016. She was a visiting teacher at the Boston Conservatory, the Juilliard School, the Shepherd School of Music, and the Interlochen Academy and Summer Camp, along with serving as a frequent guest and clinician at the Britten Pears Centre at Snape Maltings in England.
A longtime member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Alumni Association, Jorja Fleezanis was preceded in death by her husband, American music critic and author Michael Steinberg.
This article also appears here.
from the archives 