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"What an incredible musician. I have seldom met anyone with (his) range of talent." Loris Tjeknavorian
"I can't think of anyone who plays Gershwin's music more feelingly and more beautifully." Gunther Schuller
Biography 1997-98
Stefan Kozinski has been re-engaged to conduct the Radio-Philharmonie Hannover in a special Christmas Concert to be broadcast on the North German Radio. Other conducting engagements in the 1997-98 season include Wagner's FLYING DUTCHMAN for Greater Buffalo Opera and more performances of PORGY AND BESS with the New York Touring Production's International Tour. In the 1996-97 season, Mo. Kozinski returned as conductor to that company's tour of Asia and Australia. He led the orchestra and played keyboard in his reduced score version of Humperdinck's HANSEL AND GRETEL for Delaware Dance Company and conducted his 40th NUTCRACKER for Alberta Ballet with the Spokane Symphony. His first organ recording by Gunther Schuller's GM Recordings, which includes Reger's very rarely recorded Sinfonische Phantasie und Fuge, op. 57, will be released in the spring of 1997.
In the 1995-96 season Mo. Kozinski began to take part in the Metropolitan Opera's Education Series performing activity. He conducted staged productions of DON GIOVANNI for the Rutgers School of Music, DIE FLEDERMAUS with the Birmingham Opera, and FAUST with the Metro Concert Opera Orchestra, which he serves as Music Director. He recently made his international recording debut, as conductor and arranger on the London label "Sound Solutions", in ten songs by popular Iranian expatriate composer Anoush lrvan Rohani - recorded with the Czech Symphony Orchestra of Prague. These arrangements were featured at a special concert in Hamburg (Germany) in November1996 with Mo. Kozinski conducting.
Mo. Kozinski was Associate Conductor of the Spokane Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 1995. His SymFunnies concerts broke box office records and have been performed with the Aachen, Billings, Buffalo, Detroit, Jacksonville, Sacramento, Mesa, New Hampshire, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Toledo and Calgary Symphony Orchestras. He has created over 60 arrangements and orchestrations ranging from operatic reductions to symphony orchestra and from big band to solo organ. These include 13 orchestrations of Civil War-era spirituals for the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble which were critially acclaimed at their 1994 premiere in Hannover (Germany) - with Mo. Kozinski conducting the Radio-Philharmonie Hannover. His own compositions have been performed by many organizations, including the New England Ragtime Ensemble, United States Marine Band, and University of Delaware Resident String Quartet, as well as the orchestras cited above. He is published by E.C. Schirmer and Margun Music, and has been inducted into the Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress.
Engaged by the Hannover State Opera (Germany) in 1982, Mo. Kozinski conducted more than 30 performances of staged works by Offenbach, Kalman, and Bernstein, among others, in the main house. In addition, Mo. Kozinski was a coach at the Hannover College of Music and Theater, conducted the Hannover Chamber Opera, and was pianist for many recitals, including the opening of the Wagner Centenary.
After graduating Summa Cum Laude from Princeton University in 1976, Mo. Kozinski became a Coach/Conductor at the American Opera Center and at Boris Goldovsky's summer opera institutes. From 1977 to 1982, he also conducted at Tanglewood, the Lake George Opera Festival, the New York State Festival, and frequently with the Garden State Symphonic Pops Orchestra, Riverside Orchestra, Kozinski Chamber Ensemble, as well as the Delaware, Brooklyn and New Jersey Opera Companies.
Born in Delaware in 1953, Mo. Kozinski began piano studies at age 4, and subsequently experimented as performer and composer with almost every instrument of the orchestra. At age 9, his "Suite No. 1" won the Philadelphia Orchestra's Children's Composition Contest. As composer-conductor, Kozinski made his debut with the Delaware Symphony at age 13, premiering his "Elegy for Orchestra". His teachers included Nadia Boulanger, Robert Casadesus, Marcel Dupre, Vincent Persichetti, Erich Leinsdorf, and Peter Herman Adler. In 1974 Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter presented him with the Lili Boulanger Award for Composition. Nadia Boulanger described Mo. Kozinski as "one of the most gifted musicians I have met".
Select critical acclaim for Stefan Kozinski
Conductor - Symphony / Opera / Ballet
"Kozinski revelled in Prokofiev's flood of feeling" -
Spokesman Review
"...using a minimum of movement to achieve maximum expressive
effect..." - Lincoln Journal
"Under Kozinski's baton... a radiant performance [of
Fidelio]" - [Del.] State News
"...a remarkable memory for details...and...required tempi. His
interaction with the stage heightens the quality of the
performance..." - Ali Pourfarrokh, Alberta Ballet
Soloist / Recitalist - Piano - Organ
"It would be churlish not to recognize Kozinski's technical skill
in these pieces... or... the thrills he produced...in their tumultuous
mood-changes" - Spokesman Review
Originator / Conductor - SymFunnies Children's Concerts
"Much praise to the conductor...charm... showmanship... exceptional
concept..." - Aachen Nachrichten
"The most last-minute tickets sold in the history of the Spokane Opera
House" - Spokesman Review
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