Russian born violinist, violist, and conductor, Leonid Yanovskiy is Director of Strings and Orchestra and Professor of Violin and Viola at the University of West Florida. He is the concertmaster of the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra. He is an Artist Faculty with the InterHarmony International Music Festival (Germany, Italy, NYC). Yanovskiy taught at the prestigious State Gnessin Music College and Gnessin Academy of Music in Moscow, Russia. As a violinist with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and American Symphony (NYC), Yanovskiy performed under the baton of Abbado, Botstein, Mackerras, Menuhin, Norrington, Previn, Shaw, Zinman, and others, on the stages of the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Orchestra Hall, Kennedy Center, and Boston Symphony Hall. Yanovskiy served as Principal Violinist with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra Northern Crown, Concertmaster of the Riverside Symphonia and Garden State Philharmonic (NJ), as well as a Principal Violinist with the Philadelphia Virtuosi Orchestra (PA) and the Goliard Chamber Music Ensemble (NYC). From 2005 to 2019, he served as Concertmaster of the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, Niceville, FL.
In recent years, Yanovskiy performed solo and chamber music recitals at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, was a Principal Violinist and soloist with the Washington Square Festival Orchestra and Chamber Ensemble (NYC), and has appeared in recitals throughout the United States, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Korea, Mexico, and Russia. Critics praised his playing for “expressive sound and profound interpretation” (Sulzbach-Rosenberger Zeitung, Germany) and for the “sumptuous, vibrato-rich tone and a kind of energy that made… fast movements dance” (New York Times).
At the University of West Florida, Yanovskiy is the founder and director of one of Florida’s leading undergraduate string programs. Dr. Yanovskiy is the Conductor of the UWF Orchestra The Runge Strings and Director of the UWF Student & Faculty String Ensemble. Besides the formal concerts on campus, both group perform extensively in the community and on recruitment tours throughout FL and beyond. Dr. Yanovskiy’s violin and viola students are winners of national, regional and state competitions; they successfully enter graduate programs at such institutions as Juilliard, Cleveland Institute of Music, Indiana University, University of Maryland, University of North Texas, Florida State University, and others. A number of his former Music Education students successfully work in school districts across FL and TX. Yanovskiy is Director of the annual UWF StringFest, the summer festival, bringing together high-school and college students for a week of studies of string quartet and orchestra technique, history, and repertoire.
Dr. Yanovskiy studied violin, viola and conducting in Russia, France, and the US. Among his teachers were Arnold Steinhardt and Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet, Valery Berlinsky of the Borodin Quartet, and Olivier Charlier of the Paris Conservatoire. Yanovskiy performs on a 1675 violin by Fabio Mariani, Pesaro, Italy.