A Night at the Ballet

Performers

Moores School of Music

Franz Anton Krager

Since making his prize-winning European conducting debut in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Koncertsalen in 1978, Franz Anton Krager has led orchestras in Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Town Hall and Adrian Boult Hall in Birmingham, Moscow’s State Kremlin Palace, Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, Guangzhou China’s Xinghai Music Center, the Sydney Opera House, The Hague’s Congresgebouw, Zagreb’s Lisinski Concert Hall, Kazan’s State Philharmonic Hall in Russia, Guadalajara’s Degollado Theater, and Sarasota’s Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. His affiliations with leading music festivals include the Dubrovnik Summer Festival in Croatia, Lancaster International Concert Series, Lichfield and Aberystwyth International Arts Festivals in the U.K., the Festival Internacional de Santa Lucía in Mexico, and the Texas Music Festival and Interlochen National Music Camp in the U.S. Maestro Krager has led the Houston, Russian State, Slovak National, Dubrovnik, Traverse City Michigan and Florida West Coast symphonies, Romanian and Kazan State philharmonics, and orchestras in Washington, Berlin, London, Chicago, Paris, Singapore, Leipzig, Zagreb, Monterrey, Grosseto, Pordenone, Ingolstadt, Chichester, Neuss, and Honolulu. Krager is Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Texas Music Festival and Founding Co-Artistic Director for the Virtuosi of Houston. Krager is also the Hourani Endowed Professor of Music, Director of Orchestras, and Chair of the Conducting Department at the University of Houston Moores School of Music, where he has brought the orchestra and orchestral conducting program into international prominence. The Moores School Symphony Orchestra has recorded on the Divine Art (Métier), Albany, MSR Classics, ArsPublica, Newport, and “Surround-Sound Blu-Ray Audio” HDTT record labels.

Olena Blahulyak, piano

Olena Blahulyak is a pianist of Ukrainian origin, currently living in Houston and establishing an active performing and teaching career. Olena’s love for music was fostered by her mother and a guild of influential teachers and mentors. Her admission at the age of twelve into the Lysenko’s Special Music Boarding School in Kyiv, where she studied with renowned pedagogue Sergei Riabov became one of the earliest significant and decisive steps in her professional musical education. In 2001, she made her orchestral debut performing Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 under the baton of Mykola Suk at the Vladimir Horowitz Summer Festival.

In 2009 she graduated as a gold medalist from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Kyiv, where she obtained her first Master’s degree in Piano Performance. She is a winner of multiple national and international piano competitions, including the 2003 International Chamber Music Competition in St. Petersburg, the 2004 II Zatin International Competition in Ukraine, and Ella Phillip Competition in Romania (2007), and the Sam Houston State University Concerto Competition in 2018, where she performed Prokofiev’s