Virko Baley (born October 21, 1938) is a Ukrainian-American composer, conductor, and pianist. He was born in Radekhiv in Poland (now in Ukraine), the only child of Petro (Peter) and Lydia Baley. Petro Baley was interred at Auschwitz concentration camp following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, and he and extended family were relocated to Slovakia. The family was reunited on a farm in Germany towards the end of the war to work as farm laborers, after which they relocated to Munich. From 1947 to 1949, the family lived in a displaced person's camp in Regensburg, Germany.
Baley began his formal music training in Germany. He studied at the Los Angeles Conservatory (renamed the California Institute of the Arts).
He retired from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with the rank of Distinguished Professor of Music Composition after an academic career there lasting 46 years.
Baley is the former conductor of the Nevada Symphony Orchestra and was the guest conductor of the Kiev Camerata in Ukraine. He also co-directs Nevada Encounters of New Music, and collaborates with the New Juilliard Ensemble in New York. Baley composed the score to the 1991 Ukrainian film Swan Lake, The Zone.
In Spring 2007, Baley was commissioned by the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University to write his opera Hunger.[1]
As a producer, and through his record label TNC, Virko Baley has released a series of compact discs containing rare recordings of the pianist Sviatoslav Richter and of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the latter earning him a GRAMMY® Award.
Baley has written articles on musical topics and is a contributing editor to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. From 1980 to 1995, He co-founded the Nevada Symphony Orchestra and was its music director from 1971–1985, and from 1975 to 1987 was the music director of the Las Vegas Chamber Players.[2]
