Stephen Sitarski

Stephen Sitarski enjoys an incredibly varied career as a violinist and conductor, and enjoys an excellent reputation nationally in performances of Baroque music through to jazz and modern. He is also a recognized conductor, adjudicator, music administrator, and teacher. Along with his Concertmaster duties at HPO, Mr. Sitarski is Concermaster of Esprit Orchestra, and held the same position with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (KWS) for 15 seasons (1997 – 2012). During the summer of 2018, he will serve as Concertmaster for the orchestra performing the Mirvish Production of “The King and I” at the Princess of Wales Theatre. Stephen has also been guest concertmaster across Canada with orchestras such as the Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Vancouver Symphony, and orchestras in the United States and Europe, with many distinguished conductors including Mstislav Rostropovich, Philippe Entremont, Raymond Leppard, Bramwell Tovey, and James Judd.  He has served as Associate Concertmaster of the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and was guest concertmaster and featured soloist with the National Ballet Orchestra for Eugene Onegin and Russian Seasons in March 2011. Stephen has always maintained a hand at mentoring and teaching; he will mark his 15th year on a faculty of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. In recognition of this, he was previously awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal, a nomination submitted by the NYOC. In previous years, Stephen taught at Wilfrid Laurier University, the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Stephen Sitarski earned his Master of Music in Performance at the State Unviersity of New York, Stony Brook, and received his Bachelor of Music in Performance at the University of Toronto.  Two of his most inspiring influences are Lorand Fenyves and Joyce Robbins.  An Oakville, Ontario native, Stephen is now based in Kitchener-Waterloo, and commutes regularly to Hamilton and Toronto.  He is an advocate for the mental and physical health of musicians, and has given talks about the mental strain of a musician’s life. He was profiled in the April 2018 edition of The WholeNote magazine.