A brief biography of Virko Baley
Virko Baley is a Jacyk Fellow at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, and Distinguished Professor of Music, Composer-in-Residence and co-director of NEON, an annual composers’ conference, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He received a 2007 Grammy® Award as recording co-producer for TNC Recordings and the prestigious Academy Award in Music 2008 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Born in Ukraine in 1938, Virko has spent his creative life in the United States and considers himself a citizen of the world. Multi-lingual and multi-disciplinary, he infuses his music with themes of contemporary and traditional motifs.
Virko has spent his creative life in the United States and considers himself a citizen of the world. Multi-lingual and multi-disciplinary, he infuses his music with themes of contemporary and traditional motifs.
Baley’s musical training began in Germany and continued in the United States at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music (now California Institute of the Arts), where his principal teachers were Earle C. Voorhies and Morris H. Ruger and where he received BM (magna cum laude) and MM degrees.
During his tenure, in addition to founding the composition area, Mr. Baley established an Annual Contemporary Music Festival (1971-1985), was honored with the first NEA music grant given to Southern Nevada, created the Las Vegas Chamber Players (1975-1995), was Music Director and Conductor of the Nevada Symphony (1980-1995), the Music director of NEXTET (2001-2016), and co-founded with Jorge Grossmann of N.E.O.N. (2007-2009, 2016), the annual composers’ conference, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Baley became the founder and director of the Annual Contemporary Music Festival at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The festival existed through 1986.
ln 1975, Virko received an NEA grant, the first such grant in Nevada, to establish a chamber ensemble, The Las Vegas Chamber Players, which for over 16 years gave each season from 8 to 10 concerts and was the resident ensemble of the Annual Contemporary Music Festival.
Virko was one of the founders, and for 15 years the Music Director and Conductor of the Las Vegas Symphony Orchestra (renamed in 1986 as Nevada Symphony Orchestra). During his 15-year tenure with the orchestra, in addition to performing the standard symphonic repertoire, Baley programmed many contemporary works, including Berio’s Sinfonia, Bernard Rands’ Canti de/ Sole, Donald Erb’s Trombone Concerto and works by such composers as Wuorinen, Artyomov, Copland, Revueltas and many others. Of particular significance were the world premieres of two major works by the renowned Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov: Exegi Monumentum and Postludium as well as pieces by Leonid Hrabovsky, Ivan Karabits and Myroslav Skoryk. Also important were the staging, with the great flamenco dancer and choreographer Luisa Triana, of Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Brujo and La Vida Breve.
In 1990 together with the Ukrainian composer Ivan Karabits, he initiated the Kyiv (Kiev) Music Fest in Kyiv, Ukraine and for five years was its co-director.
Virko Baley was born in Ukraine in 1938, but has spent his creative life in the United States and considers himself a citizen of the world. Multi-lingual and multi-disciplinary, he infuses his music with themes of contemporary and traditional motifs.
Shirley Fleming, reviewing a concert of his music given by CONTINUUM, in the New York Post called his music “vibrant, dramatic, communicative, much of it framed by extra-musical allusions that place it in a solid context.”
The New York premiere of Concerto No. 1, quasi una fantasia for violin by the New Juilliard Ensemble, Joel Sachs conductor, Tom Teh Chiu, soloist, prompted the Village Voice critic Kyle Gann to describe it as full of “sonic images memorable enough to take home.”
His Symphony No. 1: “Sacred Monuments” was described by David Hurwitz in Classics as, “Powerfully imagined, clearly articulated, and quite moving… It’s a very serious ambitious statement by a gifted artist, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it turns out to have more staying power than many other contemporary works by today’s trendier composers.”
In 2010, reviewing a recent CD released of Virko Baley’s music, Robert Schulslaper wrote that “Baley’s music [is] deeply lyrical and emotively powerful in equal measure. Recommended,” while American Record Guide pronounced, “These are exceptional compositions and fantastic performances. The language in these pieces is a part of a larger context of exploration for new sounds in the world of instrumental music.”
In reviewing Baley’s monumental chamber cycle Treny in Gramophone, Ken Smith wrote “The strength of the piece lies in its highly – and unapologetically – emotional content, dispensed artfully with the utmost thematic discretion…Hearing nearly 73 minutes of brooding Slavic ruminations on death may not inspire much toe-tapping, but Baley does arrive at an effective catharsis. The vocal line, whose wordless hum soon blooms into a text reconciling itself to human morality, descends on the earthiness of the cello like a message from above…”