Violist Jonah Sirota is known as a solo and chamber music violist of great range and depth. He was third prize winner in the 2006 Naumburg Viola Competition, and has won concerto competitions at both Rice University and at the Juilliard School. A champion of new music, he has commissioned and premiered new viola works from Gabriela Lena Frank, Arthur Joseph McCaffrey, and Alexis Bacon, as well as a concerto by his father, composer Robert Sirota. He has performed at the Marlboro, Norfolk, Yellow Barn, and Aspen music festivals.
Mr. Sirota is also the violist of the Chiara String Quartet, known for their "Chamber Music in Any Chamber" performances in and outside of the concert hall. With the Chiara Quartet, he serves as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, under the title of Assistant Research Professor. His duties include teaching a small studio of violists, as well as chamber music coaching and a performance series with the quartet. In addition to his teaching at Nebraska, he joins his quartet colleagues for a three-year post as Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University starting in the fall of 2008. Additionally, Mr. Sirota teaches at the Greenwood Music Camp, and at the Red River Chamber Music Festival.
Mr. Sirota has studied with Martha Katz, Roberto Diaz, and Samuel Rhodes, among others. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelors of Music degree from Rice University, and then received both a Master of Music degree and an Artist Diploma in String Quartet Studies from the Juilliard School. He also studied aesthetic education and audience engagement at Juilliard with master teacher Eric Booth. In addition, he writes a travel blog for the Journal of the American Viola Society.
As a viola professor, Mr. Sirota specializes in highlighting awareness of the body-mind connection as it applies to technique and musicianship. He has used his own successful experiences in fighting performance-related injuries to help students fix injuries, reduce tension in their playing, reduce fear in their approach to performing and career, and become engaging musicians and artists. Rather than taking a "cookie-cutter" approach to the development of his students, he believes that each student has a unique musical voice, and works to make that voice independent and confident.
