Chicago-based musician Brian Torosian is an active soloist and chamber musician on guitar, lute, and mandolin. In addition to completing doctoral studies at Northwestern University with Anne Waller, Torosian studied with Oscar Ghiglia during the summer months of 1994-1996 at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy where he received Diplomas of Merit and an honorary scholarship. Furthermore, he has taken numerous master classes with Eliot Fisk, Paul O'dette, Pepe Romero, Manuel Barrueco, Robert Guthrie, Sérgio and Odair Assad, Roberto Aussel, William Kanengiser, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, David Starobin, Mark Maxwell, Nigel North, Eduardo Fernandez, and David Russell as well as early music and continuo studies with David Schrader and Mary Springfels.

Besides performing on the standard six-string guitar, Torosian also concertizes on replicas of a Baroque guitar, a Terz guitar, and a 10-string guitar, the latter two made for him by Richard Bruné after rare mid-nineteenth-century Viennese instruments. Concert performances close to his Chicago home include appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Grant Park Symphony, Chicago Opera Theater, Waller and Maxwell Duo, His Majesties Clerkes, CUBE, Ensemble Español, Concert Dance Inc., North Suburban Symphony, and Classical Symphony Orchestra. His performances also include a series of recitals marking the Centennial Birthday Anniversary of Andrés Segovia, broadcasts on WFMT's Impromptu and Live From Studio One, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, and other live radio performances, appearances at the NAMM International Music and Sound Exposition, Orpheus Young Artists Series, American String Teachers Association Festival, Illinois Music Educators Association Conference, Ravinia Festival, Bach Week Festival, and National Flute Association Convention. As an orchestral parts player on mandolin, guitar, and lute, Brian participated in performances of works by Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Mahler, Cowell, Henze, and other masters. Highlights of Brian's 2004 concert activities included several matinee appearances as concerto soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Torosian serves on the faculty at DePaul University and directs the guitar program of Northeastern Illinois University, where he recently received a Faculty Excellence Award. He is also an annual participant and instructor in the Mid-America Guitar Ensemble Festival as well as a board member of the Chicago Classical Guitar Society. Torosian's daring programs often feature rare guitar masterworks from his vast collection of scores, well-known classical guitar favorites, and his own transcriptions and arrangements. He also has championed numerous contemporary guitar works, particularly those of Robert Beaser (the epic solo Notes On A Southern Sky and his guitar and flute duos) as well as compositions associated with Segovia, and has often participated in premier performances of new guitar music. As an author, editor, and teacher, Brian has produced thousands of pages of music and commentary, including volumes of program notes for nearly all instrumentation for several concert series. Long an exponent of the music of nineteenth-century virtuoso guitarist and composer J. K. Mertz, Torosian's doctoral dissertation Mertz in America chronicles the music of Mertz in the United States in the early twentieth century. He has edited an anthology of operatic concert works entitled Selected Operatic Fantasies of Mertz, which is available from Mel Bay Publications ( MelBay.com or 1-800-863-5229).

In 2005 he collaborated with Oscar Ghiglia, Anne Waller, and Mark Maxwell in a complete performance of the lute suites of Bach. Torosian presented various concerts, lectures, and publications highlighting J. K. Mertz in 2006, the composer's bicentennial year including collaboration with eminent keyboard artist David Schrader, directing a three-day Mertz festival, and a complete edition of Mertz's prodigious Opern-Revue, Op. 8, available from DGA Editions (DigitalGuitarArchive.com).

In 2006-2007, Torosian was twice invited to perform lute, mandolin, and guitar at Symphony Center for Yo-Yo Ma's and Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Silk Road Project workshops. In 2007 he performed guitar in orchestral parts with the Grant Park Symphony. The second volume of DGA Editions' Opern-Revue, Op. 8 was released October 23, 2007, and their publication of Brian's edition of Mertz's chamber work for violin/flute, viola, and guitar Divertissement über Motive der Oper: Der Prophet (Meyerbeer), Op. 32 was released in Spring, 2008. The next volumes of Opern-Revue, Op. 8 as well as collaborations with Chanterelle Verlag, Heidelberg are in preparation. Brian's editions are available both directly from his publishers and via e-mail through this MySpace page. See blog above for more information and ordering address.♣