Kristine Bogyo

Kristine Bogyo passed away on April 6 at Sunnybrook hospital, after a heroic 14-year battle with cancer. She was born in Budapest, grew up in Montreal and spent most of her life in Toronto.

Bogyo studied cello with Janos Starker at Indiana University and Bernard Greenhouse in New York. She founded and conducted the Mooredale Youth Orchestra, and also founded and was Artistic Director of Mooredale Concerts, both under the umbrella of the Rosedale-Moore Park Association. She was also the co-founder of the Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound, Ont.

The inspiration for the Mooredale Youth Orchestra came from within her own family. In 1986, when her violin-playing son Julian (who is now assistant conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and in the fall becomes assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony) was 10 years old, Bogyo founded the orchestra to give him (and later his cellist brother, Rafael) and other young musicians the opportunity to play together in a congenial environment.

Today over 100 young musicians ranging in age from 8 to 20 are enrolled in the orchestra where, coached by leading professionals, they perform three concerts a year. Over the years they have performed ten symphonies by Haydn, eight by Mozart, four by Beethoven, and a large number of other important works, all under Bogyo’s direction. The orchestra allows young musicians the opportunity to work together in a non-competitive atmosphere, and has had profoundly beneficial effects on the young participants, who are often isolated in their schools for lack of enough peers with similar interests. Bogyo regularly received numerous letters from the “graduates” and their parents, not just for inspiring them to love classical music and continue their studies, but for helping them cope with very difficult periods in their lives.

For Mooredale Concerts, which presents more than a dozen performances a year, Bogyo sought out brilliant young Canadian talents and provided them with cameo appearances at most Mooredale events, often followed by participation in chamber music with leading professionals. Since 1989 Bogyo employed and stimulated over a hundred professional and highly accomplished young musicians to work together in a variety of chamber ensembles. Some unknown young performers she showcased in the past have since become leading Canadian stars, including Isabel Bayrakdarian, Martin Beaver, Russell Braun, Measha Brueggergosman, Stewart Goodyear, Erika Raum and James Sommerville,

Bogyo commissioned several Canadian composers to create new works, most notably ‘A Song of Lilith’, which premiered in 2001 and toured in many other cities across the country. She worked closely with celebrated Canadian author Joy Kogawa, composer Larysa Kuzmenko and artist Lilian Broca to create this unique multi-media event.

Bogyo’s most recent initiative was Music & Truffles: short, interactive concerts that introduce classical music to very young children. With the narrator in a colourful costume performing a script created by Bogyo, every performance of Music & Truffles has been sold out since the series’ inception in 2003.

As a performer Kristine Bogyo appeared as soloist with many orchestras such as the Montreal Symphony, the New Chamber Orchestra, the North York Symphony, the Northern Sinfonia, and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, with which she also served as principal cello. She also played in the orchestras of the Canadian Opera Company, the National Ballet, and the Toronto Symphony, and participated in Music at Marlboro, the Festivals of Santa Fe, Parry Sound, Grand Tetons and Lockenhaus (Gidon Kremer’s festival in Austria). She has performed recitals in Chicago, Cleveland, Princeton, Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver, among many others cities, and was heard frequently on the CBC.

In 2005 Bogyo was summoned to Rideau Hall to receive the Meritorious Service Medal from Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, in recognition of her work promoting young Canadian musicians.

Bogyo was married to pianist Anton Kuerti. They often performed together, and also released two successful CD’s. In January 2003 CBC Television featured the couple and their two sons in an hour-long documentary, called "A Marriage in Music." According to the Montreal Star, MBogyo was “one of those rarities that the world of cellists produces from time to time - a player of strength and vigour who can make a long, warm lyrical line sing.”

In addition to music, Bogyo was deeply devoted to literature and pictorial art, and delighted in roaming the great outdoors with her husband (and often their children), including raft trips down many rivers including the Nahani river in the Northwest Territories.

In addition to her sons and husband, Bogyo leaves two sisters, Katalina MacDonald of Saarbruecken, Germany, and Esther Bogyo, of Toronto. Mr. Kuerti says he is determined to see to it that both Mooredale Concerts and the Mooredale Youth Orchestra continue to thrive as a wonderful living memorial to his wife’s memory. The family have requested that no flowers be sent.

A short memorial service for her many friends and admirers will be held on April 15 at Walter Hall, University of Toronto, at 12:15 p.m.