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Lawrence Wheeler, founding music director and GHYO orchestra conductor, is an associate professor at the University of Houston Moores School of Music. He has been the conductor of string ensembles at the University of Houston and The High School for Performing and Visual Arts and has guest conducted several Texas Region orchestras, as well as the Texas Private Schools All-State Orchestra. From 1988-1993 he was a conductor for the Houston Youth Symphony & Ballet. In 1993, he founded the Greater Houston Youth Orchestra. Mr. Wheeler is former Principal Viola of the Pittsburgh Symphony and has served as Co-Principal of the Minnesota Orchestra and guest Principal with the Dallas and Houston Symphonies. He has appeared as soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Icelandic National Symphony, Texas Chamber Orchestra, Hilton Head Chamber Orchestra, and the UNAM Philharmonic in Mexico City. Familiar to Houston audiences through numerous solo recitals and chamber music appearances, Mr. Wheeler has given viola recitals in New York at Alice Tully Hall, in London at Wigmore Hall, at International Viola Congresses in Stuttgart, Rekjavik and Houston, as well as recitals in Mexico City and throughout Texas. He has performed with the Tokyo, Pro Arte and Tallis String Quartets, the Mirecourt Trio, and with Da Camera of Houston. For several years Mr. Wheeler was violist of the Lyric Art Quartet, whose compact disk, Classical Hollywood, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1990. Two other compact discs include works with the Texas Festival and Picasso Quartet. With pianist Ruth Tomfohrde, he has recorded several American works for viola and piano, released by Albany Recordings. His recorded performances have been heard in Houston on KUHF, nationally on National Public Radio's Performance Today, and throughout Europe on the BBC. A graduate of the Juilliard School, his teachers include William Lincer, Walter Trampler, Bruno Giuranna, Francis Tursi and Leonard Mogill. For five summers he taught at the Meadowmount School for Strings, and for twelve summers at the ENCORE School for Strings, where he worked with many of the most gifted of the younger generation of string players. He has also taught and performed at the Musicorda Summer Musical Festival in Massachusetts, the Bowdoin Music Festival in Maine, and the Texas Music Festival in Houston. Being committed to music education, he has sent more of his viola students to Texas All-State orchestras than any private teacher of any instrument, which include fifteen Symphony and three Philharmonic first-chair players. Larry's family includes his wife Linda, a professional violinist, and two sons, Erik, 12, and Alex, 10, both of whom are studying the 'cello and play in GHYO. |
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Founding
Director and Orchestra Conductor