Edward I. Yadzinski
1940 - 2020

Edward Yadzinski joined the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) in 1963 as a clarinetist, bass clarinetist and saxophonist under music director Lukas Foss. With a borrowed instrument and encouragement from his mentors and classmates, Yadzinski took an audition that began his 57-year career as a musician, composer, teacher, writer, and historian.

In his early days in Buffalo, outside of his full BPO schedule Yadzinski accompanied Foss as a chamber player performing at venues for new music across Europe, including the Warsaw Autumn Festival and the Festival for American Music at St.-Paul de Vence at the Maeght Gallery in Southern France. Building on this work, as clarinetist he recorded Foss renowned Echoi with the composer at the keyboard. As a performer, Yadzinski appeared 28 times as a soloist and is heard on numerous Orchestra recordings produced through the late 1980s. 

Parallel to his work with the BPO, Yadzinski became a member of the music performance faculty at the University at Buffalo (UB), teaching clarinets, saxophone and the occasional math lesson over four decades. Given his eclectic academic interests, Yadzinski lectured on acoustics for the UB Department of Physics, frequently highlighting the close relationships between science and music to make abstract concepts relatable in the classroom.

In the late 1970s while on sabbatical from UB, Yadzinski served on the faculty at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) teaching Acoustical Physics and music. In his time between classes, he directed the UCSD Wind Ensemble, played clarinet with the avant-garde SONOR and was invited to lecture at the American-Japanese Conference on Acoustics in Honolulu, Hawaii.

As a composer, Yadzinski created more than one hundred distinct works and arrangements including a notable song cycle on the poems of Emily Dickinson and chamber music inspired by Stephen Crane. His original pieces for woodwinds Sirène and à Paganini are published by Alphonse Leduc, Paris.

Drawing on his broad experience in performance and education, Yadzinski authored well over a thousand individual articles as the BPO concert annotator since 1990. In each vignette, he highlights the beauty, nuance and history of the music for audiences often from the unique ‘behind the scenes’ perspective of a musician. Concurrently, Yadzinski developed and curated the Orchestra's detailed archives, chronicling the extensive BPO history beginning in 1935 and he co-authored of Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra: The BPO Celebrates the First 75 Years, a 120-page illustrated book that celebrates Buffalo’s rich musical heritage.

A native of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Yadzinski graduated from Wilkes College (1962) and the Eastman School of Music (1963) studying with William Gasbarro and Stanley Hasty respectively. His professional associations included the Acoustical Society of America, and as an amateur radio enthusiast, he held a Life Membership with the American Radio Relay League.