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My interest in music was sparked while I was a boy. My father played violin with the Stradivarius String Quartet, and the household was filled with music, from Beethoven to Bartok and Shoenberg. At age 15 I made my concert debut at Carnegie Hall, and in the same year appeared as a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Four years later, I made my critically acclaimed recital debut at Carnegie Hall.
I later graduated from the Hartt College of Music, University of Hartford, and then received my Masters Degree and Doctorate of Musical Arts from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
I am a professor of music at San Francisco State University and hold professorships at Catholic University of America, California State Universities of San Francisco and Hayward, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Within my vocation as a violinist, I embrace both the classic and the avant-garde in my search to create sounds that enliven and heal. Dr. Bernie Siegel stated, "I found years ago that music creates a healing environment. I find Kobialka's to be the best available."
I was the founding concertmaster and soloist at the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, where I played alongside John Adams, one of my high school friends who is now regarded as one of the foremost contemporary composers of our time.
Other important relationships that influenced my music include such legendary musicians and composers as Lou Harrison, Harry Partch, Vivian Fine and Henry Brant. Aaron Copland called me "a sensitive and intelligent performer with a natural gift for his instrument."
My focus is to further develop music that builds on the concepts of the ancients---Pythagoras most influences my thinking. It is time to incorporate non-Western tonalities, such as the musical approaches of Japan and Java into our sounds. I want to make spacial music that utilizes the unique characteristics of the venue to best advantage. I want to create music that surrounds and envelops, that intensely and accurately elicits an enlivening response in the listener. It is my greatest desire that when you hear my music, you are soothed, you feel joyfully alive."
To that end, I pioneered the development of the Zeta Polyphonic violin, a MIDI synthony instrument that can be played and heard in a very large space. The world premier of my Concerto for the Zeta-Polyphonic Electronic Violin, commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, was performed March 1991.
I am currently composing a trilogy with the famous composer-acoustician Loren Rush and with composer-pianist Jan Mattox of the "Good Sounds Foundation. The trilogy is based on the theories of Pythagoras with tempered instruments and tuned pianos within his 5 and 7 systems of tuning.
I have commissioned over 30 works from such composers as Pulitzer Prize winners Charles Wuorinen, William Bolcom, Henry Brant, and Wayne Peterson. I have premiered both solo works and concertos for violin, including Ben Weber's Violin Concerto, dedicated to him, with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Robert Shaw. With the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, I gave both the American premiere of Toru Takemitsu's 'Far Calls, Coming Far' and the world premiere of Charles Wuorinine's 'Rhapsody', a work written especially for me. Musical America wrote, "With de Waart conducting, Kobialka played the kind of heart-and-soul, totally secure performance composers dream about but all too rarely get to hear."
I also premiered Henry Brant's 'Litany of Tides' with the San Jose Symphony and George Baratis' Violin Concerto with the Santa Cruz Symphony. Other composers who have written and dedicated works for me include George Rochberg, Meyer Kupferman, Olou Harrison, Vivian Fine, Henry Brant, Fred Fox, Arthur Custer, Theodore Antoniou, Marta Ptaszynska, and Benjamin Lees. I was honored by being asked to serve as concertmaster for the premier of Leonard Bernstein's 'Mass', which opened in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., prompting Bernstein to state "Kobialka is a musician of unusual strength and devotion."
I continue to be sought after internationally as a performer and lecturer, as well as composer. I have performed at major events in Europe, Taiwan and Japan where my recordings are best sellers. The Japanese government awarded me a Medium Term Grant to study traditional and contemporary music. During this same period I performed a newly commissioned work of Benjamin Lees, Sonata No.2 for Violin and Piano, the world premiere at the International Cultural Center in Tokyo. I also gave a lecture recital at the Fukushima Music Arts Festival. One of my most recent appearances was documented on a commercial video released by Prem Promotion Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Aiyoshi Kawahata stated, "The gentle, sweet melodies pulsing from your music relaxes my heart and fills my mind with happiness."
The New York Times Best Recordings List included my 'Autumn Beyond', coupled with Henry Brant's 'Solar Moth'. Many of my other recordings have become perennial best sellers in both the classical and healing music markets. In order to freely pursue my own interpretations of the classics, as well as my interest in more avant-garde music, I founded my own record label, LiSem Inc. which has sold millions since its inception in 1981.
My music is also the core of a series of studies linking sound with CAM, complimentary and alternative medicine for health and healing. At the center of my focus is the rejuvenative power of music. I have led didactic and interactive workshops and seminars, traveled the world bringing my violin to hospitals from Beijing, China to Plainsville Ohio, and recorded music for meditation and guidance with alternative healing pioneers including Joan Boreysenko and Bernie Siegel.
I held the position of Principal 2nd Violinist with the San Francisco Symphony for over two decades, occupying the Dinner and Swig Families Chair. In addition to my many performances worldwide, I am also the founding concertmaster and soloist with San Francisco's annual Midsummer Mozart Festival Orchestra under George Cleve, with whom I have recorded Mozart's Violin Concerto No 1.
I now also teach young students, and maintain a world wide web presence at DanielKobialka.com