Curtis Mourns the Passing of Jan Mark Sloman (Violin '72)

The Curtis Institute of Music mourns the loss of Jan Mark Sloman (Violin ’72), who died on Tuesday, September 27, at age 73. The highly revered violinist and teacher, whose multi-faceted career spoke to his immense passion for the violin, served as the principal associate concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) and was a member from 1997 until his retirement in 2015. Throughout his illustrious career, he also performed as guest concertmaster with the Pittsburgh Symphony and internationally with orchestras in Florence, Italy; Lugano and Geneva, Switzerland; and Melbourne, Australia.

Born in 1949, Mr. Sloman was a university scholar at Princeton University and attended the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Jaime Laredo, Paul Makanowitzky, and Ivan Galamian. He also studied with Joseph Silverstein. Mr. Sloman has been a pedagogue at numerous music institutions over the years, and for the past two decades, his focus had increasingly shifted toward teaching. In Dallas, he had a large private studio and, for nine years, taught both graduate and undergraduate students as an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University.

Mr. Sloman served on the faculty of the Meadowmount School of Music in Westport, New York, from 2010–17, and in March 2015, accepted an appointment to the violin faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. His summer studio at Meadowmount received generous financial support from the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation. In 2018, Mr. Sloman joined the Heifetz International Music Institute faculty in Staunton, Virginia.

A staunch supporter of educational opportunities for young musicians, Mr. Sloman, founded the nonprofit organization the Institute for Strings, to offer students in the Dallas area the opportunity to immerse themselves in an intensive music program with solo and chamber music performances, including concerts as part of a self-conducted string orchestra. This unique summer program allowed forty elite string players each session to work with seasoned professional musicians to hone their technical and interactive music skills throughout nineteen seasons.

Mr. Sloman worked with numerous internationally renowned conductors, such as Carlos Kleiber, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, and Riccardo Chailly. He has also mastered a wide range of repertoire as an orchestral soloist, performing works spanning from Bach to Beethoven and Tippett to Shostakovich. The Curtis community will sorely miss him. We extend our sympathies to his wife Louise, his sons Jacob and Joseph, friends, and his colleagues.

Read a post from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra HERE.

Read an article about Mr. Sloman in The Strad HERE.