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Jeffrey Sykes

Acclaimed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as "a commanding solo player, the most supportive of accompanists, and a leader in chamber music," pianist Jeffrey Sykes has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Western Europe. The San Francisco Examiner praised his appearance with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players as "a tour-de-force performance [that was] the evening's major delight."

Recent activities include a Carnegie Hall recital with flutist Stephanie Jutt under the auspices of the Pro Musicis Foundation and a live broadcast over WGBH, Boston Public Radio. His performances have been frequently broadcast over National Public Radio's Performance Today, and he has a discography including eleven CDs published by various labels. Together with Ms. Jutt, Dr. Sykes is the founder and artistic director of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society of Wisconsin, a highly-acclaimed and innovative chamber music festival now in its seventeenth season. The festival is noted for integrating dance, drama, and visual art into the concert setting and creating an approach to chamber music that makes it more easily accessible to audiences. He is a regular guest artist in the Cactus Pear Music Festival in San Antonio and a founding member of the Painted Sky Festival in Flagstaff, Arizona. In 2007, Dr. Sykes served as the guest artistic director of Music in the Vineyards, a chamber music festival in Napa Valley, California. This year, Dr. Sykes has joined with violinist Axel Strauss and cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau to form the San Francisco Piano Trio. For the last ten years, Dr. Sykes has served as the Music Director of Opera for the Young, a professional opera company that gives more than 200 fully-staged performances a year to schoolchildren throughout the upper Midwest. He works extensively as a vocal coach throughout the United States.

Dr. Sykes joined the faculty of California State University, East Bay in the fall of 2008 where he coaches, accompanies, and directs the piano accompanying class. Dr. Sykes holds degrees with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Franz-Schubert-Institut in Baden-bei-Wien, Austria. He continued his studies in musicology at the University of Pennsylvania as a William Penn Fellowship recipient, and then was a Fulbright scholar at the Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. A recipient of the Jacob Javits Fellowship from the United States Department of Education, he completed his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

(9/08)