Adam Smyla

Adam Smyla joined the San Francisco Symphony viola section in 2000 and served as an Acting Associate Principal violist from 2005 to 2007. Previously, he was associate principal viola of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, as well as the principal viola of the Peninsula Music Festival in Wisconsin and the Storioni Ensemble at Northwestern University. From 2005 to 2015, Smyla was a faculty member at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 2000, he joined the Sun Valley Music Festival in Sun Valley, Idaho, and in 2005 was appointed as principal violist there, a position he continues to hold. Smyla regularly appears as a soloist in Sun Valley and with orchestras nationally and internationally.

At age 17, Smyla won the Polish National Viola Competition in his native Poland. A year later, he became the youngest member of the Polish National Radio and Television Orchestra in Katowice. He completed his bachelor and master’s degrees in three years at the Katowice Academy of Music. As a founding member of the Penderecki String Quartet, Smyla toured internationally for nearly a decade throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. He pursued advanced chamber music studies with the Fine Arts Quartet at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and earned an artist diploma at Indiana University in Bloomington.

In addition to performing with the San Francisco Symphony, Smyla has been the viola coach for the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra since 2005 and plays chamber music throughout the Bay Area, frequently with his wife, pianist Edna Koren. He plays a 1773 Mantegazza viola on loan from the San Francisco Symphony. In his free time, he enjoys cultivating his passions for physics, astronomy, playing the guitar, and composing.