Wagner’s French Connections by Maestro Leo Eylar, Music Director of the California Youth Symphony

Conductor-Composer Leo Eylar was born in Los Angeles and grew up in a musical family. He began studying violin at the age of nine and was accepted into the private studios of both Jascha Heifetz and Ruggiero Ricci. He attended Northwestern University and the University of Southern California, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree Summa cum Laude. In 1980, Eylar joined the Seattle Symphony, and in 1982 was awarded an International Rotary Foundation Grant to study conducting at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, Austria. After studies there with Otmar Suitner, he returned to the U.S. and completed his Master’s Degree in conducting at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, simultaneously holding the position of Co-Concertmaster of the San Jose Symphony from 1984-89. Eyler has also guest-conducted extensively throughout Europe and Asia, including prestigious music festivals in Japan, Austria, France, and Australia. He has also been a frequent guest conductor of the San Jose Symphony. With a repertoire of over 400 symphonic works as well as numerous operas, Eylar brings a vast range of expertise and depth to his conducting. He is also a composer of international stature. His compositions, which blend a rich, coloristic neo-romanticism with elements of jazz and driving Eastern European rhythmic vitality, have been performed in Carnegie Hall as well as in England, the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, Russia, China, and Austria. Maestro Eylar is the third music director in California Youth Symphony history and over the past 25 years elevated CYS to ever-greater musical heights.