Biography
Alex Rux
I was born in Lutsk, Ukraine, where I started playing the violin at the age of five. I studied with my father Vitaly Stytsyuk. Honestly, as a child I did not like the violin, or rather I did not like to play it, because the sounds that fly out of the violin when you just start learning to play it, not everyone can stand. It was more interesting for me to walk with friends in the yard. There was even a time when my father came home from work and asked if I played the violin, and I said: «yes». And then he asked: «Where is the violin»? But I didn’t know what to say. That’s how I «loved» the violin as a child.
And later, when I was 12 years old, I participated in the competition of young violinists in our region and won the 2nd prize there. As I prepared for the competition, I felt that the violin was what I needed. It is a feeling of struggle with oneself, with the technical difficulties of playing an instrument and the desire to become better. This motivated me to continue working on this tool.
Since the beginning of my creative career coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was difficult for my parents to find money for me to go to violin competitions. But I did not give up and worked hard.
So in 1993 I entered the Lviv specialized music boarding school named after S. Krushelnytska, where I studied in the violin class with Myroslav Sora. And after graduating from school in 1997, I went to Kyiv, where I entered and continued my studies at the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music of Ukraine.
As a student in 2000, I started working in the Ensemble of Classical Music named after Borys Lyatoshynsky, a famous band in the post-Soviet space, a soloist and artist of the ensemble. Also since 2002 I have won a competition in the international orchestra K&K Philarmoniker, where I worked for 5 years and had the opportunity to perform in the best halls in Europe, such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Gevandhaus in Leipzig, Alte Opera in Frankfurt am Main and more.
Since 2004 I have been continuing my postgraduate studies at the Department of Chamber Ensemble with Professor Tetyana Arsenicheva. From 2003 to the present, I have been collaborating with the famous Lysenko String Quartet. In 2010 and 2011 I received a scholarship to participate in the Zeist music days festival and master classes in the Netherlands. There I studied with Shmuel Ashkenazi, the first violinist of the Jerusalem Quartet Alexander Pavlovsky, violinist Andrei Bielow, cellist of the Szymanowski Quartet Marcin Senyavsky and other famous musicians of the world.
Since 2000, I have played more than 3,000 concerts in various ensembles, both in chamber, symphony orchestras and as a soloist. Concerts were held both in Ukraine and throughout Europe. In 2016, I visited the United States in Danville, Kentucky, at the invitation of Jaemi Loeb as a volunteer, giving a concert with a symphony orchestra of students for whom I conducted workshops and gave lectures. This was my first trip to the US. In 2016 and 2021 i was invited to teach at masterclasses in Malta Central Academy.
I recently finished work on my first classical and rock album in the same time called Muse of Heaven. This is where my new life stage begins.
