Violinist finds perfect mix of performing, teaching

Violinist Sherry Kloss says she feels a sense of payback to be performing in an alumni concert at Duquesne University.

'I've studied in many illustrious schools,' says Kloss, a Carrick native who earned her master's degree at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City and has an honorary degree from a school in Italy. 'But Duquesne is the heart of my studies.'

She will be performing Sunday with pianist L. Mark Carver in a program that also will feature the classical guitar of John Marcinizyn and James Ferla.

Kloss is professor of violin and distinguished professor of music at Ball State University in Indiana and a concert and recital soloist.

She also is a former student of violin virtuoso Jascha Heifitz and performs on a 1736 Carlo Tononi violin he willed her when he died in 1987. She studied with him from 1974 to '79 and in 1993 founded the Music Institute for the Development of Personal Style in the Memory of Jascha Heifitz at the University of Southern Oregon.

Last year, she self-published a memoir, 'Jascha Heifitz Through My Eyes' and has sold about 1,000 copies without any marketing effort. She says most of the people who read it are fans of the violin master or come across it on her Web site at Ball State, www.bsu.edu/cfa/music/ faculty/skloss.

While Heifitz obviously is her most famous mentor, she says the staff at Duquesne in her undergraduate days played an important role in her development.

At that time, she says, the school that now is Carnegie Mellon University had a better reputation for instrumental studies. But, she adds, violist Raymond Montoni formed a string orchestra at Duquesne and professors such as Ferdinand Pranzatelli, Oleg Kovalenko and Jack Goldman gave heft to that school's program.

'If you were a string player, Duquesne was really the place to be,' she says. 'The concert will be dedicated to the teachers who supported and taught me.'

She took the position at Ball State a little over a year ago. Her husband, Albert Labinger, died suddenly about two years ago and she began looking for a new direction for her professional life. She was living in Rancho Mirage, Calif., and wanted to get closer to the East Coast.

'The people at Ball State treated me so well as a job candidate, I thought they must treat their staff people well, too,' she says.

She says she was right. Officials at the school are supportive of her performing career, so she has no difficulty juggling that with her teaching.

Besides her work as a soloist, Kloss also is the violinist of the American Piano Trio and every year puts together a program at Mt. Lebanon High School called String Fest.

She says she sees that work as part of her job, too. She recalls the importance of her studies with Hungarian violinist Tibor Varga, who concentrated on developing her performance style. And she thinks she should offer that to developing musicians, too.

'You have to realize the impact a professor has,' she says. 'It is our responsibility to prepare them for the outside world.'

Bob Karlovits can be reached at (412) 320-7852 or bkarlovits@tribweb.com .