John Lowry, violin

John Lowry has been Associate Concertmaster of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra since 1987 and has also served as guest concertmaster of orchestras in Edmonton, Halifax, Winnipeg, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Red Deer, as well as the Adelaide Symphony of South Australia. He was formerly Concertmaster of the New Hampshire Philharmonic, Opera New England and Yale Philharmonia, and has performed extensively with the Toronto Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Boston Pops, Canadian Opera Company, Opera Company of Boston, Amadeus Ensemble, National Ballet, Esprit and New Haven Symphony. John was the founder and first artistic director of the Kensington Sinfonia in Calgary, and has appeared as soloist with professional orchestras in Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Halifax, and Red Deer; with such conductors as Hans Graf, Mario Bernardi, James Judd, Jean-François Rivest, Timothy Vernon, Ivars Taurins, Pierre Hétu, and Claude Lapalme.

A native of Edmonton, John began his studies with Ranald Shean, going on to graduate from the University of Toronto (BM) and Yale University (MM). His principal teachers included George Neikrug, David Zafer and Oscar Shumsky. He also participated in master classes and received extensive coaching from Steven Staryk, Orford Quartet, Tokyo Quartet, Rafael Hillyer, Joseph Silverstein, Szymon Goldberg, Lorand Fenyves, Sidney Harth, Zoltan Székely, Gábor Magyar, Anthony Newman, Jose Luis Garcia, Henri Temianka, and Shmuel Ashkenazi.

John was a founding member of Calgary's Land's End Ensemble, specializing in 20th and 21st-century music, whose recordings have won the Western Canadian Music Award for Outstanding Classical Recording in 2005 and 2006, as well as the Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year in 2014. John has given premieres of several important composers, including Peter Maxwell Davies, R. Murray Schafer, Allan Gordon Bell, Omar Daniel, Alexina Louie, Derek Charke, Jocelyn Morlock, Arthur Bachmann and others. He has collaborated with such luminaries as James Campbell, Evelyn Glennie, Barry Shiffman, Robert Aitken, Jeff Nelson, Joel Sachs, Bernadene Blaha, Rivka Golani, Kevin Fitz-Gerald, Eliot Fisk, Robert Silverman, Angela Cheng, and Miriam Fried, and has performed with Aventa Ensemble, the Athabasca String Quartet, Rosa Selvatica, Trio Haydn de Montréal, and Yale Contemporary Ensemble. John's violin was made by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi in 1769.

He was previously on the faculty of the University of Manitoba and the University of Lowell, Massachusetts, and has also taught at the University of Calgary, as well as at summer programs at the Banff Centre, Comox Valley Youth Music Centre, Vancouver Island Music Academy, Langley Community Music School, SUNY Potsdam, JVL Summer School for the Performing Arts and Spencer Brook String Program in Massachusetts. He is an expert in the Dounis violin method and a frequent audition coach. Several recipients of his coaching have won positions in professional orchestras, and his students have earned prizes in local and national festivals and competitions. He is currently on the faculty at Mount Royal University Conservatory in Calgary.