The American Viola Society is an organization headquartered in Dallas, Texas that promotes interest in the viola by its performers, teachers, luthiers, and enthusiasts.[1]
The American Viola Society offers a variety of services to its members and violists worldwide including a viola bank offering loans of instruments, the Maurice Gardner Viola Composition Competition, a National Teacher Directory, and publications, including The Journal of the American Viola Society and free sheet music downloads. The American Viola Society also sponsors and funds the Primrose International Viola Competition, one of the world's premier competitions for violists, and frequently hosts International Viola Congresses.
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In 1971, Myron Rosenblum founded the American Viola Research Society, a subset of the Viola-Forschungsgellschaft, now the International Viola Society (IVS). The organization changed its name in 1978 to the American Viola Society to better reflect the interests of its members. In 1979, David Dalton founded the Primrose International Viola Competition in honor of the great Scottish-American violist William Primrose. That same year, the American Viola Society co-commissioned George Rochberg's Viola Sonata in celebration of Primrose's seventy-fifth birthday.
In 1985, the AVS began publishing the Journal of the American Viola Society (JAVS), an outgrowth of the AVS Newsletter that it had previously produced. The JAVS has been a leading source of viola research; notably publishing several articles on the genesis and revision of Béla Bartók's Viola Concerto. Upon retirement of David Dalton as longtime editor in 1999, JAVS established the David Dalton Viola Research Competition for student members of the society.
To further the organization's mission of encouraging performance and developing the fraternal bond among violists, the AVS initiated local chapters during the 1990s. More than two dozen state and regional chapters have formed, many of which have established their own viola choirs and viola festivals that offer educational opportunities to area violists.
The AVS inaugurated the biennial Maurice Gardner Composition Competition in 2009. The first winner was Rachel Matthews, whose work Dreams for Viola and Piano was premiered at the 2010 International Viola Congress.