Former students and faculty honor Isidor Saslav at SFA concert

by Jan Statman

The “Isidor Saslav String Scholarship Fund” was created in recognition of Dr. Saslav’s important contributions to music and to the university.

Isidor Saslav

LONGVIEW — Dr. Isidor Saslav will receive a singular honor when the School of Music at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches dedicates a scholarship fund in his name. The “Isidor Saslav String Scholarship Fund” was created in recognition of Dr. Saslav’s important contributions to music and to the university. He was a member of the faculty of the Stephen F. Austin Music Department, which is now the School of Music, for ten years from 1993-2003. A special concert will be performed at Cole Hall March 31 to mark the historic event.

In addition to Dr. Saslav and his wife, nationally known pianist Ann Heiligman Saslav, the twenty-five performers in the unique concert will include Saslav’s former students at Stephen F. Austin State University and faculty members of the School of Music. Friends and colleagues of Dr. Saslav who hold important positions in the field of music will travel to Nacogdoches from across the United States to help celebrate the new string scholarship.

The concert will include the Mendelssohn D Minor Trio performed by four different sets of three performers, and the Vivaldi Concerto for Four Violins performed by twelve different soloist performers. Stephen F. Austin’s Orchestra of the Pines directed by its music director, Gene Moon, will accompany the Vivaldi Concerto.

Visiting violinists who will perform in the concert include Charles Castleman of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York; Karen Clarke, faculty member at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee; Kenneth Goldsmith, faculty member at Rice University in Houston; Leonard Kacenjar, conductor of the Marshall Symphony; and Richard Luby, faculty member at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Cellists will include Paul Christopher, faculty member at Northwestern University in Natchitoches, Louisiana; Evan Drachman, director of the Piatigorsky Foundation in New York; Daniel Levine, member of the Dallas Symphony; and Robert Newkirk, faculty member of the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Pianists will include Richard Dowling of Dowling Music in Houston; Tonu Kalam, conductor of the Longview Symphony Orchestra; and Robert Freeman, retired Dean of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Faculty members at Stephen F. Austin University will include violinist Jennifer Dalmas; cellists Evgeny Raychev, Mario Ajero, Andrew Parr; and pianists Linda Parr and Ron Petti. Dr. Saslav’s former students are Shane Almendarez, Fahad Awan, Hee Chan Chang, and Diana Hector Norwood. The public is invited to attend the unusual musical event. Donations to the Isidor Saslav String Scholarship Fund will be accepted at the door.

Dr. Saslav has served as concertmaster for more than seventy-five different productions in various cities. To mention only a few of his remarkable accomplishments, Saslav was concertmaster of, and soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Minnesota, Baltimore, and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras as well as the orchestra of the Round Top Festival in Texas which he helped to found with conductor Leon Fleisher in 1975. He also served as concertmaster of the Indiana University, Dallas, Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, and Baltimore Opera Orchestras and has been a member of the Detroit Symphony, the Chautauqua Symphony, and the Orchestra of the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico. The Saslavs presently live in Mrs. Saslav’s hometown of Overton. He serves as concertmaster for the Longview Symphony Orchestra.