Who We Are

Music Director

Selected as the third music director of the California Youth Symphony in 1991, Leo Eylar was co-concertmaster of the San Jose Symphony from 1984 to 1989, were he has also been a frequent guest conductor. He is currently on the music faculty at Sacramento State University, where he conducts the University Symphony.

In 1982 he was awarded an International Rotary Foundation Fellowship for advanced studies in conducting at the prestigious Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, Austria. He was conductor on the national television broadcast of "America Sings", with Bobby McFerrin and Judy Collins.

Eylar is also a composer of growing fame. He has seen his original compositions performed at Carnegie Hall and London's Wigmore Hall, as well as in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. The Seattle Symphony recorded his Dance Suite for Trumpet and String Orchestra, and he composed a harp concerto commissioned by the International Harp Society. Another work, An Orpheus Legend for Violin and Orchestra, was premiered by the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival Orchestra in July 1997. Eylar's orchestral work, Tonescapes, was premiered at the CYS 50th Anniversary Concert on March 3, 2002.

Eylar was commissioned by the internationally known German contemporary chamber group, Ensemble 8, to compose a work to be premiered in Berlin. The piece, Three Klee Pictures, is a series of three movements based on paintings by the famous Swiss painter. In 2004 the internationally recognized German string bass virtuoso, Christine Hoockt, recorded Eylar's Suite in Three Movements for Bass and Piano, as the leading work on her debut CD. Recent commissions have included an octet for the German contemporary group, Ensemble 8, and Sonata for Saxophone and Piano, commissioned by well-known saxophonist Keith Bohm, recorded in 2006.