Roger Myers

Roger Myers enjoys an impressive record of performing and teaching both here and abroad. He has traveled widely presenting critically acclaimed concerts and master classes in countries on four continents including Austria, Norway, Scotland, China, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Mexico, as well as the US. At the University of Texas at Austin he is Professor and head of the string division, and was the recipient in 2007 of the School of Music Teaching Excellence Award.

Mr. Myers has been associated with some of the nation's most prestigious summer festivals including the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival in Maine, the International Festival Institute at Round Top, Texas, and the Marrowstone Music Festival in Washington. In June of 1997 he served as the youngest ever artistic director and host chairman of the 25th Silver Anniversary Viola Congress, an event praised by the Strad magazine as a "joyful and instructive week. . . a mixture of edification and entertainment." He has served seven summers on the faculty of the Idyllwild Arts Summer Music Program in California and taught at the Beijing International Music Festival and Academy, and at the International School for Musical Arts in Canada. He regularly performs at the Festival de Musique on the French West Indian island of St. Barthelemy, at the Sunflower Festival in Topeka, Kansas, and at the Buzzards Bay Musicfest in Marion, Massachusetts. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the Blanton Chamber Music Series at the Blanton Museum in Austin. In 2009 he held a visiting professorship at the University of Southern California.

Roger Myers was born in Sydney, Australia, where he played with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra while still a student. He has lived in the United States since 1987, when his Sydney Conservatorium String Quartet was invited to become the international quartet in residence at Michigan State University. Later he studied on scholarship with Donald McInnes at the University of Southern California where, on completion of his Masters degree, the string faculty named him its most outstanding graduate of the year.

Presenting solo and chamber performances hailed internationally, the Toronto Star described his playing as "spirited" and the New Zealand Evening Post proclaimed him "a fine violist" whose playing was "various and entertaining." Roger Myers has given chamber music performances with such artists as Lynn Harrell, Jean Barr, Martin Canin, Steve Doane, Sidney Harth, Suren Bagratuni, Yehonatan Berick, Norman Fischer, Jorja Fleezanis, Daniel Heifetz, Mark O'Connor, Ronald Leonard, Martin Lovett, Donald McInnes, Felicia Moye, Kurt Nikkanen, James Parker, Tsuoshi Tsutsumi, Kathleen Winkler, Zvi Zeitlin, the Brentano, Cavani and Miro String Quartets and the Dorian Wind Quintet. He has performed with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as principal violist with the Santa Fe Pro Musica, and as principal viola with the New West Symphony Orchestra in Los Angeles on tour with Andrea Bocelli. Chamber performances include concerts with the Camerata Pacifica chamber music organization in California, at the Niagara International Chamber Music Festival in Canada and most recently with the Da Camera of Houston. In 2004 Mr. Myers had the honor of performing as a featured soloist on the 100th birthday tribute concert to the great violist William Primrose at the XXXII International Viola Congress in Minneapolis, and in 2005 enjoyed a successful Carnegie Hall debut with the newly formed Texas Piano Quartet. Recent important world premieres he has performed include the Piano Quintet by Kevin Puts with the Texas Piano Quartet in 2006, and most recently in 2008, the world premiere of Michael McLean's Suite for Viola and Orchestra. In the summer of 2009 he played in the mid-west premiere of violinist Mark O'Connor's Third String Quartet with the composer.

Mr. Myers plays a beautiful and rare J.B. Guadagnini viola from Parma made in 1763.