Kenneth Sarch

Adjunct Faculty
Areas of Expertise: Violin

Kenneth Sarch enjoys a distinguished career and an international reputation as violinist, conductor, composer and master teacher. Sarch is a graduate of the Juilliard School having studied with Ivan Galamian, Dorothy DeLay and Sally Thomas, earning both his undergraduate and masters degrees. Further studies have been with Robert Koff of the Juilliard Quartet and Roman Totenberg at Boston University receiving the Doctor of Musical Arts in violin performance. He received the artist diploma in chamber music from the New England Conservatory where he performed as 1 ^st violin of the Boston String Quartet. Sarch taught on the faculty at Boston University for eight years as assistant to Roman Totenberg. Subsequently, he taught on the faculties of Shenendoah University Conservatory and Mansfield University in Pennsylvania as professor of violin and viola and conductor. Sarch was awarded two Fulbright Scholar Awards to teach at the Federal University in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where he founded and was the first conductor of the Orquesta Sinfonica Juvenil. Sarch’s orchestral experience as violinist encompasses a host of ensembles under many of the world’s great conductors. He played in the American Symphony under Leopold Stokowski, the Hartford Symphony under Arthur Winograd, and the Berkshire Tanglewood Orchestra under conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Erich Leinsdorf and Michael Tilson Thomas. He served as concertmaster of the Williamsport Symphony for fourteen years, as well as the Maryland Symphony and the New York Orchestral Society. He currently performs as concertmaster for the Bloomsburg University Community Orchestra and the Lycoming College Community Orchestra.

Sarch has served as president of the Pennsylvania/Delaware String Teachers Association. He was awarded the 2003 Citation of Excellence in Music Education from the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association. He has received four USIA Arts America Grants to teach, perform and conduct in Panama, Israel, Brazil and Jordan, and two Fromm Foundation Grants for performance at Tanglewood. He is co-author of the American String Teachers Association “Dictionary of Bowing and Pizzicato Terms.” He currently serves as violin forum editor of the ASTA American String Teacher magazine. He has been invited twelve times to conduct the Panama National Youth Orchestra and four times to present string sessions at the ASTA National Conference in Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Tampa and Pittsburgh. His compositions for string orchestra are published by KJOS Music Co. and LUDWIG Masters Series. In 2003, Sarch was invited to Cuba as a member of a United States Delegation of String Teachers sponsored by ASTA and People To People Ambassador Program.

Press Reviews:

“an artist who performs with a flair for the colorful…”- Hartford Times

“performed with absolute conviction and artistry…”- L’Information (Tel-Aviv)