ARTUR JANSONS is a graduate of the University of Toronto, Faculty of Music (MusBac’77) and New York’s Juilliard School (BMus.’80, MMus.’81).

Principal teachers and generous mentors include Pavel Zarins (Toronto) David Zafer (University of Toronto) Gerald Stanick (UBC, U.Vic.) Lillian Fuchs (Juilliard) and William Primrose and Cecil Aronowitz (The Banff School and Aldeburgh, England)

Artur enjoyed a varied and eclectic performing career touring extensively throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Based in Toronto, he performed with virtually every major ensemble in the region and over the course of his long freelance career played with, among others, the Vancouver Symphony, CBC Chamber orchestra, the Hamilton Philharmonic, Symphony Nova Scotia and toured across Canada and the United States with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Canadian Opera Company.

In 1985 he began a long-standing association with the Stratford Festival Orchestra as Principal viola, recording incidental music for dozens of plays and playing for more than 20 productions of musical theatre’s best known classics.

In 1989 he was hired by Canadian jazz great Moe Koffman to be Principal viola for Livent of Canada. 

As that organizations principal, he played more than 4000 performances of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera both in Toronto and on tours to Hawaii, Alaska, Hong Kong and Singapore and was concertmaster during the development of Kander and Ebb’s musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, directed by the legendary Harold Prince, which went on to win 7 Tony Awards on Broadway in 1993. Recording credits with Livent include the original Canadian cast albums of The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime and Sunset Boulevard.

Other recording credits include discs by Molly Johnson (Molly), Blue Rodeo (Tremelo), Moe Koffman (Music for the Night) The Stratford Festival (Sweet Airs That Give Delight) and Anne Murray’s Christmas Album among others.

While commercial theatre provided a comfortable base, a freelance career spanning almost 50 years offered many opportunities to play recitals and chamber music, from Bartok string quartets in London’s Wigmore Hall, to recitals in New York and elsewhere. A seven-city cultural exchange tour to China with the Ontario Chamber Symphony in 2011/12 included performances in Beijing, Suzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai.

The opportunity to meet and work with many notable artists from all genres, like composer Aaron Copland, violinists Oscar Shumsky, Yehudi Menuhin and Zoltan Szekely of the original Hungarian String Quartet and Tony Bennett, Sarah McLachlan, Gladys Knight and Paul Stanley (from the band Kiss - Livent’s last “Phantom”!) not to mention Canada’s finest classical actors at the Stratford Festival, or the legends of Broadway, Chita Rivera, Colm Wilkinson, Patti LuPone, Brent Carver, Mandy Patinkin and so many more, made for a rich and rewarding playing career.

Artur Jansons also taught as an itinerant music instructor with the Toronto District School Board for over 17 years and served as an occasional adjudicator for the University of Toronto, Faculty of Music and the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music.

Recently retired, He continues to serve as Chair of the Toronto Latvian Concert Association (TLCA) and through that organization promotes and supports the work of outstanding artists of Latvian Heritage.