Rita Porfiris Appointed Assistant Professor Of Viola At Hartt School

The Hartt School proudly announces the appointment of Rita Porfiris as Assistant Professor of Viola. She will assume her new post in September. Born in New York, Porfiris received both her BM and MM in Viola Performance from The Juilliard School.

A member of the Houston Symphony since 1995, she has been Guest Principal Violist with the Indianapolis Symphony, Principal Violist with the New World Symphony and the Schleswig-Holstein Orchester as well as in the section of the Radio-Sinfonie Orchester Berlin and the Baroque Orchester Berlin. As a soloist she has appeared with numerous orchestras in North America, most recently in April 2008 with the Mexico City Philharmonic in celebration of their 30th anniversary season.

An award-winning chamber musician, Rita is a recipient of Austria's prestigious Prix Mercure, one of the top prize winners in the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and the William Primrose InternationAl Viola Competition, and laureate of the Paolo Borciani International Quartet Competition. She has given solo and chamber concerts at Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, the Salzburg Mozarteum and various other venues worldwide. In Houston, she can be heard performing with the Greenbriar Consortium, The Foundation for Modern Music, Barmusic, and on faculty concerts at both the University of Houston Moores Opera House and Rice University. In March 2008 she was featured as a member of the Montrose Quartet at the Houston Symphony's Beethoven Festival. She was also a member of the Plymouth Quartet which was featured in an article in Chamber Music America and on National Public Radio and with the quartet toured the U.S., Europe, and South America to critical acclaim.

Most recently, Ms. Porfiris has been on the faculty of the University of Houston Moores' School of Music, the Texas Music Festival, and the Intensive String Quartet Seminar at New York University. Formerly, she was on the faculties of Florida International University and the Harlem School for the Arts in New York. Porfiris has given master classes and clinics across the U.S., Japan, and Brazil. An avid champion of modern music, in 2006 she performed the premiere of Confrontacion for Viola and Orchestra, written for her by Mexican composer Max Lifchitz. She recently published an article in the American Viola Society Journal detailing the importance of physical fitness in preparing for virtuosic modern works. Rita receives daily training with Jack Walston's Original Navy SEAL Physical Training course. Her top push-up score is 134 in two minutes.

Professor Porfiris joins a distinguished string faculty at Hartt, other members of which include Katie Landsdale and Anton Miller, violin, Robert Black, bass, Mihai Tetel and Terry King, cello, and Steve Larson, viola.

The Hartt School is the comprehensive performing arts conservatory of the University of Hartford that offers innovative degree programs in music, dance, and theatre. With more than 400 concerts, recitals, plays, master classes, dance performances, and musical theatre productions a year, performance is central to Hartt's curriculum. For more information on The Hartt School, visit www.hartford.edu/hartt.