Violinist and Pedagogue Jan Mark Sloman has Died

An associate concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Sloman was loved as a teacher at multiple institutions

A University Scholar at Princeton University, Jan Mark Sloman attended the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Jaime Laredo, Paul Makanowitzky, and Ivan Galamian. His other teachers include Joseph Silverstein, Paul Makanowitzky, and Jaime Laredo.

Throughout his performance career, Sloman served as principal associate concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He was also a guest concertmaster with the Pittsburgh Symphony and international orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, and  Australia.

For nine years, he taught both graduate and undergraduate students as an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University. He was then appointed to the violin faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), where he taught gifted students at the college, graduate, and pre-college levels.

After having taught for seven summers at the Meadowmount School of Music, Sloman rejoined the faculty of the famed Heifetz International Music Institute in 2018.

Additionally, he was the founder of The Institute for Strings (TIFS), an educational program with chamber music as its primary focus.

"He believed in me so much that it was near embarrassing, but it also pushed me to see what I was capable of," Sloman's student violinist Shannon Lee wrote on her Facebook. "By the time I was 16 he had taken me on adventures to record a CD (on his fiddle) at Skywalker Ranch, to study for a summer in China, to play the Sibelius concerto with orchestra in Germany.

"He told me stories about the music world, and soon I became part of what had just sounded like fairy tales and got to see these people and places in real life...He was always there for me, as my mentor, teacher, coach and violin uncle, and it's incredible how many people he impacted."