MEET THE ORCHESTRA

Principal Clarinet of The Syracuse Orchestra, Allan Kolsky held positions with the Louisiana Philharmonic and the Utah Symphony before joining the Syracuse Symphony as Principal Clarinet in 2002. He has appeared as soloist with the orchestra in clarinet concertos by Mozart, Nielsen, Copland, Finzi and Weber. He has also performed with the Cincinnati Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Chautauqua Symphony, the Skaneateles Festival, Glimmerglass Opera and the Colorado Music Festival. In local recitals and chamber music, he has performed for Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music, and the Society for New Music. Civic Morning Musicals awarded him the 2011 CMM Award for Excellence in Music Performance in Central New York.

Mr. Kolsky holds music performance degrees from Temple and DePaul Universities, where he studied privately with Anthony Gigliotti (Principal Clarinet of the Philadelphia Orchestra) and Larry Combs (Principal Clarinet of the Chicago Symphony). His early teachers included Pasquale Cardillo and Frank Marinaccio. As a student, Kolsky won a Tanglewood Fellowship, performed with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and played in master classes coached by Robert Marcellus, David Shifrin and Harold Wright.

A co-host and featured performer at the 2001 conference of the International Clarinet Association, Mr. Kolsky currently teaches at both Hamilton College and Onondaga Community College as an adjunct Lecturer in Clarinet, and has also taught clarinet at SUNY (Oswego) and the University of New Orleans.

In addition to music, Allan loves great literature, and his humorous, 500-word parody of William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” won the international 2001 Faux Faulkner Contest. He has also acted in several community Shakespeare productions with the Syracuse Shakespeare Festival. Allan is married to Ellen Somers, a licensed mental health counselor.