VC Artist Jordan Bak to Join University of North Carolina School of the Arts Faculty

As an educator, Jamaican-American violist Jordan Bak recently completed a year at Bowling Green State University's College of Musical Arts (BGSU) as an Assistant Professor of Viola.

He is also a former faculty member at New York's Opportunity Music Project and serves as a visiting artist and ambassador for Music Masters in London. Bak has given masterclasses at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (UK), Conservatorio del Tolima (Colombia), and the Brevard Music Center.

His most recent appointment will see him join the University of North Carolina School of the Arts' Music Conservatory as an Assistant Professor of Viola.

"As one of the top public arts conservatories in the country, UNCSA is truly an excellent and dynamic place of creativity and learning, and I am so looking forward to being inspired by the amazing students and faculty here while challenging the next generation of brilliant musical masterminds," Bak writes. "I can't wait to bring the viola love to Winston-Salem!"

"To BGSU College of Musical Arts, thank you so much for a wonderful year of music making, discovery, and enthusiasm - for that, I am endlessly grateful and will cherish our time together. All the best and looking forward to this new chapter!"

The 2021 YCAT Robey Artist and a top laureate of the 2020 Sphinx Competition, Jordan Bak is also a Grand Prize winner of the 2019 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, the recipient of the 2019 Samuel Sanders Tel Aviv Museum Prize, and the 2019 John White Special Prize from the Tertis International Viola Competition.

Other recent accolades include being a featured artist for WQXR’s inaugural Artist Propulsion Lab, plus being named one of ClassicFM's "30 Under 30" Rising Stars and Musical America’s New Artist of the Month.

In 2021, he performed an all-solo recital in the opening series of The Violin Channel's highly acclaimed Vanguard Concerts Series.

Only the third violist to earn the Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, Jordan Bak earned a Bachelor of Music degree from New England Conservatory and a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School where he was awarded the prestigious Kovner Fellowship. His principal teachers were Dimitri Murrath, Hsin-Yun Huang, and Samuel Rhodes.