Profile
Vera Volchansky, described as a conductor of “impeccable taste…whose artistic ability transforms a performance into a meaningful event,” serves as orchestra director with the Millersville University Orchestra. Ms. Volchansky has worked with orchestras and various instrumental and choral ensembles in the United States, Europe, Asia and Russia. In 2019 she has been selected to participate in a prestigious Hart Institute for Women Conductors with the Dallas Opera. She notably performed at the International Organ Festival of Morelia in Mexico to the audience of two thousand attendees. Ms. Volchansky has recently served as resident conductor with the International Musicians' Academy in Bulgaria, and has performed concerts with State Sinfonietta Vidin and with Wien Sinfonietta in Vienna. She led four staged performances of Lucia di Lammermoor with Vocal Productions NYC, her performance of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale was featured on LCTV 66, and she was featured on Moving Forward Podcast with John Lim () July 5, 2016.
Maestra Volchansky performed a sold-out concert with a Grammy-Winning organist Paul Jacobs - a concert featuring the newly-installed Reuter Organ at Winter Visual and Performing Arts Center. As a conductor she collaborated with Igor Yuzefovich, Netanel Draiblate, Awadagin Pratt, Santiago Rodriguez, Jassen Todorov, Ioannis Potamousis, Zuill Bailey, Robert Spring, Rodney Mack, Luis Ledesma, Mikhail Yanovitsky and Eleni Calenos, among others. Also as a conductor she recently recorded a promotional audio for Wingert-Jones Publications (J.W. Pepper). Ms. Volchansky has served in the jury for Senior Instrumental Competition in Lancaster, Louis Vyner Competition, and Susquehanna University Concerto and Aria Competition.
Ms. Volchansky is a 2013 The American Prize finalist in Conducting, and holds a Master’s Degree in Conducting from the Eastman School. She was named a Conducting Fellow with the American Academy of Conducting in Aspen, working with David Zinman in 2007. A winner of the Fulbright Award, in 2008 she traveled to St. Petersburg to explore music of the lesser-known twentieth century Russian composers as well as the style of the St. Petersburg school of conducting as developed by Ilya Musin. While there, she studied conducting with Maestro Peter Gribanov, a Grand Prix winner of the All-Russia Conductors’ Competition, and also pursued her interest studying the psychology of conducting based on theories of a scientist and conductor Gyorgy Erzhemsky.
Maintaining an active schedule as a conductor as well as a violinist, Ms. Volchansky most recently performed the Arensky Trio with Emilio Colon and Xun Pan. Her most memorable performance on violin has been of Bach’s Double Concerto at the Steinman Hall of the Ware Center with her father, with whom she began studying violin at the age of six in Volgograd, Russia. Ms. Volchansky resides in Lancaster, PA, and is a citizen of the United States.