Jorja Fleezanis Obituary
Written by Patricia Lewy
Jorja Kay Fleezanis, violinist, concertmaster, chamber musician, and among the pre-eminent teachers of orchestral technique, died on Friday, September 9, of natural causes, in her home in Lake Leelanau, Michigan, outside of Traverse City, where she had recently retired. She was seventy.
Driven by a compelling moral vision to uphold the composers’ intentions in all musical expression, she was at once fierce and empathic. With her commanding presence and large, wide-set, penetrating eyes, Ms. Fleezanis inspired and directed her colleagues and her students toward a single goal: the fulfillment of the musical demands that a score placed on each interpreter. She located the foundation of such musical realizations in a work’s rhythmic architecture. Her dissections of color, phrasing, character, dynamics, and tempi were grounded in Italian vocal production, so much so that her bowings seemed to flow as if voiced on the breath.
Ms. Fleezanis’s career was marked by tenacity and daring. At twenty-one she became only one of two women in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1973); a few years later she became the associate concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony (1981–89). During that time, Fleezanis, with pianist Garrick Ohlsson and cellist Michael Grebanier formed the FOG Trio, whose performances were, as she described, “like a comet: we come across the sky at rare, but regular intervals.” Garrick Ohlsson, whose musical influence, and presence in Ms. Fleezanis’s life continued uninterrupted, spoke feelingly: “From the time we first played together when founding the FOG Trio in 1983, I realized that Jorja was not only a transcendent musician but a collaborator of the most profound depth and humanity. Countless others thrived in the sunshine of her presence, as I did. I can’t begin to fathom what her loss will mean for all of us.”
Among Ms. Fleezanis’s signal achievements was her appointment by then-maestro Edo de Waart as concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra in 1989, becoming one of the first women to serve in that capacity in a major American orchestra. Said de Waart, “Jorja Fleezanis was a force of nature. She put more into her music than anyone I ever worked with. She had a tremendous instinct for how things should be played. In my experience that is a rare talent—as was her ability to be absolutely charming and frank at the same time. She called things exactly as she saw them. Jorja was a great friend, and her passing is a tremendous loss to me and the world of classical music.”
Ms. Fleezanis held the position in Minnesota for two decades, becoming the longest-tenured concertmaster in their history to-date. Her tenure served as a watershed, making the position accessible to the many women who now lead orchestras from that chair. The Minnesota Orchestra commissioned two major solo works for her: the John Adams Violin Concerto, which she debuted in 1994 with Edo de Waart conducting, and Ikon of Eros by Sir John Tavener, which she and the Orchestra premiered in 2002 and recorded a year later for Reference Recordings.
Said Minnesota Orchestra Conductor Laureate Osmo Vänskä, who worked closely with Fleezanis for seven years of her Minnesota tenure, “Jorja was a wonderful musician, and she had so much passion and love for music. She was always open-minded when speaking about life, food and wine, new ideas and, of course, music. I look back on my years working with her with great fondness and appreciation.”
Ms. Fleezanis understood the demands of that chair “on every level,” as she said in a video interview at Jacobs School of Music (Indiana University, 2019)— “physically, mentally, and creatively.” She understood, too, the extent to which it entailed “dictating the artistic direction of a massive ensemble.” With intelligence and empathy, she then turned her by now vast experience toward mentoring orchestral students at The Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in 2009. From a desire to add “depth, meaning, and perspective on what each orchestral piece owns in its essence,” Ms. Fleezanis created “Behind the Score,” an annual interdisciplinary collaboration among musicologists and music theorists that over several weeks would immerse students in a single work’s historic context.
This was Ms. Fleezanis’s mode of entry to all music. As her former student, then colleague, Lydia Miller Choorapuzha wrote, “She approached teaching in the same manner, never questioning the potential of a student, but rather applying herself towards creating in the student the same commitment to the page that she felt so deeply in her soul.” Karl Paulnack, who was her recital partner for over twenty years, said their musical partnership oscillated between lover and rock-climbing partner, with her “taking me over mountains like Charles Ives’ Sonata #3 for Violin and Piano, Alban Berg’s Kammerkonzert, Roger Sessions’ Duo, peaks from which one looks down at the world as a very different place, places from which one returns utterly transformed.”
Fleezanis maintained a longtime connection with conductor Michael Tilson Tomas that dated to her time in San Francisco, and she was a frequent coach to the fellows of the New World Symphony throughout her career. In a statement Tilson Thomas said, “I am so saddened to learn of Jorja Fleezanis’ passing. She was one of the most sophisticated, devoted and omnivorously curious musicians I have ever known. She had a beautiful attitude about life and music and always found the best way to motive her students and her colleagues to make beautiful music together. She will be profoundly missed by so many.”
Ms. Fleezanis was married to Michael Steinberg in 1983, then the artistic adviser of the San Francisco Symphony and among the foremost classical music critics, teachers, and music historians of our time. Each attracted by a shared passion for music, their interests and activities were allied throughout the quarter-century of their marriage, until Mr. Steinberg’s death in 2009. His legacy was carried on, however, through Ms. Fleezanis’s establishment of the Michael Steinberg & Jorja Fleezanis Fund, whose mission is to commission and perform on an annual basis text-based original compositions by emerging composers. Ms. Fleezanis spent much of these past years compiling for publication a selection of Mr. Steinberg’s classical music reviews, written during the twelve-year period (1964–76) when Mr. Steinberg was music critic for The Boston Globe.
After formidable associations with major musical institutions, Ms. Fleezanis settled into the home she built in Michigan, close to her family and to friends who shared her long history of music making. She remained active until the very last: she had played solo works in recent weeks during two summer months teaching in California. Over a career spanning nearly fifty years, she gloried in the demands of her art. As she conveyed to close friends in verbal as well as written form, she was now sated: “I had a kind of epiphany with myself after I left the stage, already starting to weep, that maybe the demands I put on myself to bring music to life simply weren’t as doable as they once were. There comes that moment, no knowing when.” Pace our glorious light.
A memorial service to be held in Minneapolis is planned. The family requests donations to The Michael Steinberg and Jorja Fleezanis Fund.
Biography
Jorja Kay Fleezanis was born to parents Kay and Parios Fleezanis in Detroit, Michigan, in 1952. She began her violin studies in Detroit with renowned string teacher Ara Zerounian, in the company of the young violist Michael Ouzounian and violinist Ida Kavafian. She also studied with distinguished concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff. She attended the Interlochen Arts Camp and the Interlochen Arts Academy, followed by studies with Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Walter Levin at the Cincinnati Conservatory. During these years, Fleezanis learned much of the orchestral and operatic repertoire under maestro James Levine at the Meadow Brook Music Festival and in the University Circle Orchestra (1968–70). She entered the Chicago Symphony at merely twenty-one years of age.
A few years later she became the associate concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, serving from 1981 to 89, until Music Director Edo de Wart tapped her to become concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra in September 1989. She was the first woman to serve as concertmaster in the history of the Minnesota Orchestra.
She was passionately committed to new music, and the Minnesota Orchestra commissioned two major solo works for her: the John Adams Violin Concerto, which she debuted in 1994 with Edo de Waart conducting, and Ikon of Eros by Sir John Tavener, which she and the Orchestra premiered in 2002 and recorded a year later for Reference Recordings. She was also key to the Orchestra’s Composer Institute, often connecting with the program’s emerging composers one-on-one to share advice.
Her other recordings included Aaron Jay Kernis’ Brilliant Sky, Infinite Sky on CRI, commissioned for Fleezanis by the Schubert Club, and, with Garrick Ohlsson, Stefan Wolpe’s Violin Sonata for Koch International. Her performance of the premiere of Nicholas Maw’s Sonata for Solo Violin, commissioned for her by Minnesota Public Radio, was broadcast on St. Paul Sunday in 1998, and in 1999 she gave the British premiere at the Chester Summer Festival. In 1998, Fleezanis was the violin soloist in the American premiere of Britten’s recently discovered Double Concerto for Violin and Viola.
Fleezanis maintained a longtime connection with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas that dated to her time in San Francisco, and she was a frequent coach to the fellows of the New World Symphony throughout her career. She was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota while she played in the Minnesota Orchestra. She also served on the faculty of the Round Top International Festival Institute and was an artist and teacher at the Music@Menlo Festival.
She departed the Minnesota Orchestra in 2009 to become a professor of violin and orchestral studies at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, saying it was her mandate to share her experience and knowledge from 30 years as a professional musician with the next generation of musicians. She retired from that role in 2021 and most recently was teaching at Interlochen Center for the Arts and the Music Academy of the West.
She is survived by her loving and beloved brother, Dr. Nickolas Fleezanis and his wife, Elaine; her adored and adoring nephews and niece: Paris Fleezanis and his wife, Mary, and their sons, Phoenix and Stone; Jonathan Fleezanis and his wife Stephani, and their son, Theo; and Dr. Melissa Fleezanis, her husband Naher, and their daughter, Nora.