Edward Deskur

Born in the USA in 1959 to Polish refugees from World War II, Edward Deskur earned his bachelor’s degree at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY in 1981 under Verne Reynolds. But at the age of 19 he took a sabbatical from his studies to accept an invitation as a founding member of the Singapore Symphony in 1979. He later won a Fulbright Scholarship to study with Francis Orval in Liège, Belgium from 1981 to 1982. After engagements at the Duisburg Philharmonic and the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, he joined the Zurich Opera Orchestra, in which he played 32 years until choosing to take an early retirement at the age of 58. While in Zurich he worked often with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who invited him to play regularly in his Concentus Musicus Wien. Since 1995 he also has regularly played in the Milan based baroque orchestra Il Giardino Armonico. In 2017 he started performing with the Dresden Festival Orchestra. He now divides his time between performing on both modern and historical instruments, teaching and composing.