Reporter Volume 25, No.7 October 14, 1993

Yvar Mikhashoff, music professor

By  PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Bureau Staff
Yvar Mikhashoff, internationally renowned pianist, recording artist,
composer and curator of new music, died Tuesday (Oct. 12, 1993) in the
Erie County Medical Center after a long illness. He was 52. 
Since 1973, Mikhashoff was associate professor of music at UB.
Born Ronald Mackay in Albany, in 1941, Mikhashoff attended the
Juilliard School and Eastman School of Music. He adopted his
grandfather's name while a student at the University of Houston, from
which he received a bachelor's degree in piano performance and a
master's degree in music composition. In 1973, he was awarded a
doctorate in music composition from the University of Texas at Austin.
Mikhashoff was a distinguished award-winning performer, well-known on
four continents as an exponent of 20th century piano music and a
specialist in American music. He was known not only for his formidable
combination of intellect and technique, but for presenting
contemporary music interspersed with informative and
often-entertaining commentary that illuminated the music, its
background and its composer. According to colleagues, his reputation
drew many foreign students to Buffalo to study performance.
Alone and as a soloist with major orchestras, he made scores of
concert appearances in the United States and Canada, more than two
dozen European concert tours and many appearances in South America and
Asia.
His seven-hour marathon concert of 20th-century American piano music
performed in New York City in the late 1970s received tremendous
critical acclaim and was later presented by Mikhashoff throughout the
world. His production and performance of 10 concerts of American music
at the 1985 Almeida Festival prompted critics to describe him as
"omni-competent," "charismatic" and "phenomenal."  Danish critic Jan
Jacoby called him "an extraordinary musician and stunning pianist...a
contemporary piano wizard." The New York Times has written of his
"spirited, imaginative and technically adept pianism, shifting
effortlessly from esthetic to esthetic."
A leading Berlin newspaper referred to him recently as "the legendary
Yvar Mikhashoff" and he had a reputation among colleagues and students
alike for astonishing energy, accomplishment and enormous life force.
Mikhashoff's compositions have been performed in the United States and
Europe by soloists and chamber ensembles. Many other composers have
written work specifically for performance by him, including the late
John Cage, Lukas Foss, Christian Wolff, Sylvano Bussoti, Per
Norgaasrd, Luis de Pablo, Simon Bainbridge and Henry Brant. One
hundred composers contributed specially written, three-minute pieces
to Mikhashoff's "American Tango Collection," published by Quadivium
Press and performed by him on stages all over the world. 
He also had a wide reputation as a transcriber to other media of works
by Thompson, Ernst Krenek, Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem and Conlon
Nancarrow.
Mikhashoff was co-founder and director of the North American New Music
Festival, held annually at the University at Buffalo. One of the first
North American venues for the performance of new music, the festival
has hosted guest artists and composers of international stature,
including Rorem, Cage, Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, LaMonte Young, Sun
Ra and Virgil Thomson.
 The festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Oct. 27-Nov. 3
with an international cadre of visiting artists and composers.
According to festival co-founder, percussionist Jan Williams,
Mikhashoff was scheduled to appear as a pianist in several concerts
and one of his own new works was to be premiered there.
"This festival was Yvar's baby," he said. "He organized this thing
from scratch and because of his international reputation, he was able
to draw composers and performers on the cutting edge of contemporary
music."
Mikhashoff devised, produced and performed in virtually all major
contemporary music festivals in Europe, South America, Asia and North
America over the past 15 years. They include the Holland Festival and
Holland's de Ijsbreker, Norway's Bergen Festival, the Warsaw Autumn
Festival, the Zagreb Biennale, Music Nova in Brazil, Korea's Pan Music
Festival, England's Huddersfield Festival and London's Almeida
Festival, where he was associate director.
He has recorded for every major broadcast center in Europe and has
presented master classes, seminars and surveys of 20th-century music,
American music and graphic and experimental music throughout the
United States. He made countless radio and television broadcasts of
contemporary music with commentary in the United States, Holland,
England and Denmark, and on Radio Hong Kong and NHK Tokyo. As a
recording artist, he has released work on the Nonesuch, CRI, Spectrum,
Paula, EMI and New Albion labels.
Among his many awards and grants were several from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Foundation, the Province of
Quebec, Denmark's Statens Kunstfond Commission, the Arts Council of
Great Britain and the American-Scandinavian Foundation. The Austrian
government awarded him the Arbeiterkammerpreis in 1989.
He is survived by his father and stepmother, Emil E. and Marilyn
Mackay of Albany; a brother, Gary Mackay, and stepbrother J. Nelson
Gardinier, both of Las Vegas. A memorial concert will be held in
Buffalo at a date and time to be announced.