Organist/Physicist to Present Concert at UAF

Submitted by David Stech
Phone: (907) 474-5010
11/19/03

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Department of Music will present internationally known physicist and concert organist Vytenis M. Vasyliunas in recital at the Charles W. Davis Concert Hall on the UAF campus Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 8 p.m.

Vasyliunas has selected a program featuring organ music by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, as well as two American composers, Virgil Thompson and Leo Sowerby. This will be Vasyliunas’ fourth solo organ recital at UAF. Admission to the concert is free and the public is cordially invited to attend.

As an organist, Vasyliunas began his study of organ in the United States in 1954. He has given more than 200 recitals during the last 15 years in many countries, including the U.S., Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, Columbia, Norway, Austria, Denmark, Great Britain, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Israel. As a pianist, he was the permanent accompanist of his father, the well-known Lithuanian violinist Izidorius Vasyliunas, with whom he recorded several albums of chamber music by Lithuanian composers.

Vasyliunas is also internationally known as a physicist. He studied at Harvard University where he received his Ph.D. in 1966 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1975, he accepted an appointment as a scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany. He was appointed one of the institute’s directors in 1978. He is known for his research work in the area of space and magnetospheric physics, for which he received the James B. Macelwane Award of the American Geophysical Union in 1975.

CONTACT: David Stech, professor, UAF Music Department, at (907) 474-5010 or ffdas@uaf.edu.