An Oakville, Ontario native, Stephen Sitarski enjoys an incredibly varied career as a violinist and musician. He is stylistically comfortable playing Baroque through to Jazz, performing solos and ensemble works to conducting, adjudicating, consulting, and music administration.

Currently concertmaster of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, he has also led the Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, London (Ontario), Portland (Oregon) and Canadian Opera Company orchestras as guest, and is commonly asked to lead various freelance ensembles in concert and recording. As a soloist, he has performed with the Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Niagara, Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto symphony orchestras. He has commissioned and premiered violin concertos by acclaimed Canadian composers Glenn Buhr and Kelly-Marie Murphy.

Stephen is on the faculty of the Royal Conservatory of Music (Glenn Gould School) in Toronto, Sir Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, and his students regularly win professional orchestral positions.

He is the 1st violinist of the Canadian Chamber Ensemble, Toronto’s Art of Time Ensemble, and is a frequent participant in diverse chamber groups and festival events both nationally and internationally with many of Canada’s finest musicians. His recent performance of Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ at the 2006 Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival was deemed the best concert of the festival by the Ottawa Citizen’s music critic Richard Todd.

Often heard on disc and on the radio, Sitarski has performed many television and film scores (including the violin solos for the recent film “Being Julia”). He is also known as an arranger for the Emperor Quartet and Quartetto Gelato.

In recognition to his outstanding artistic contribution to the Kitchener-Waterloo community, he was awarded the 2002 Kitchener-Waterloo Arts Award for Music.

“If you didn’t know that Sitarski was a brilliant violinist before, now there would be no doubt whatsoever.” (Harry Currie, Kitchener Record - April 1, 2006)

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