The music community has been saddened to hear of the death of the Sydney-born, US-based violist Roger Myers. A concert violist and teacher, Myers was professor of viola at the University of Texas at Austin, Butler School of Music.

Roger Myers. Photo supplied

Raised in a highly musical family (his late mother, Leone Myers, née Stredwick, was a highly regarded concert pianist; his father Hal was a journalist and occasional music critic), Myers sang as a boy soprano in three Opera Australia productions. He went on to study viola at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, play with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra while still a student and with the Sydney Conservatorium Quartet.

Relocating to the US, he studied under Donald McInnes at the University of Southern California gaining his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in viola performance.

Myers performed widely. He was featured soloist on the 100th birthday tribute concert to the violist William Primrose at the 32nd International Viola Congress in 2004 and made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2005. In 2011, he performed the world premiere of a viola concerto by Peter Askim at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and in...