Dr. Selim Giray is an Associate Professor of Music and serves as Director of Orchestral Studies at the University of Mississippi. He currently serves as Member-at-Large on the Board of Directors of the American String Teachers Association (2020-2022). His textbook, String Methods for Beginners, was published by Routledge in the spring of 2020.
Between 2007 and 2016, he served as Concertmaster and between 2009 and 2012 as Assistant Conductor of The Ohio Light Opera, where he performed for 20,000 patrons each season and was featured on eight CDs for Albany Records. Previously, Selim Giray served as Assistant Professor of Violin in Music Education and Pedagogy at Wichita State University School of Music, and between 2002 and 2012, he served as Associate Professor of Violin, Viola and Artistic Director and Conductor of PSU Chamber Orchestra and Southeast Kansas Symphony Orchestra at Pittsburg State University. Between the years of 2000 and 2003, Dr. Giray taught at Interlochen Arts Camp, and from 2000 to 2002, he served as Director of Orchestra at the University of Wisconsin‑Platteville. As a violinist, Selim Giray has performed extensively on four continents and has appeared frequently on the radio and television. In 2012 and 2014, Dr. Giray performed two recitals at Carnegie Hall.
Through the years, Selim Giray has actively participated as an adjudicator, clinician, and conductor, conducting Regional and Honors Festivals in Kansas and Missouri; regularly judging Regional and All-State Music Festivals; and offering hundreds of high school orchestra clinics in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
Dr. Giray has published a number of articles in the peer-reviewed journal, American String Teacher: “Collé Action: An Alternative Perspective on Right-Hand Finger and Wrist Mobility,” co-authored with Dr. Jacob Dakon (August 2015); “To Tilt or Not to Tilt” (November 2013); and “Utilize Your Technical String Knowledge to Improve Your Conducting” (February 2012). Selim Giray interviewed Eliot Chapo for The Strad (July 2010). His CD, titled Turkish Music for Violin & Piano for ERMMedia (2010), was distributed by Naxos. In addition, he recently edited Adnan Saygun’s violin concerto for the Peermusic Classical Europe. In 2003 Edwin Mellen Press published Dr. Giray’s treatise, titled A Biography of the Turkish Composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun and a Discussion of his Violin Works. The Ministry of Culture of Turkey published the same work in Turkish, with a preface by then Minister of Culture, İstemihan Talay.
Selim Giray has presented at several prestigious international assemblies: the Suncoast Music Education Research Symposium in 2015; The Midwest Clinic: an International Orchestra and Band Conference in 2013; and the American String Teachers Association’s 2011 National Conference in Kansas City. In 2014, Giray performed for the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC at the Residence of the Ambassador of Australia. In the same year, he performed two recitals with Dr. Özgür Ünaldı (Semifinalist at Chopin International Piano Competition in Rome, and Second Prize winner at International Johannes Brahms Piano Competition in Pörtschach) at Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul International Spectral Music Conference, and Uludağ University, Conservatory of Music, in Bursa, Turkey. During the summers of 2008 and 2013, Dr. Giray visited Asunción, Paraguay, where he offered masterclasses, performed as soloist, and conducted the Camerata Orchestra. In 2004, Dr. Giray received the Rotary Foundation International’s Ambassadorial grant, which sponsored him to teach throughout the summers of 2006–2007 at Istanbul Technical University’s graduate music school, International Spectral Music Conference, in Istanbul, Turkey.
From 2006, Selim Giray has been regularly honored to give master classes with the foremost Turkish violinist, Prof. Cihat Aşkın at the CAKA project—recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Gold Medal. In addition to his teaching, Dr. Giray performed at the 34th International Istanbul Music Festival as a member of Istanbul Chamber Orchestra. Also, he played as Acting Concertmaster of the Istanbul Chamber Orchestra in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he performed in front of an elite audience of foreign dignitaries. Through the years, Selim Giray collaborated on projects, performed, offered lectures and masterclasses at City University of New York-Queens, Fort Hays State University, Louisiana State University, Florida State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Kansas, University of Oregon, and Wingate University; Anatolia University, Bilkent University, Istanbul Technical University, Uludağ University, and Yıldız University in Turkey; China Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Changji University, Northwest University for Nationalities, and Yining Normal University in China; and Edison Academy in Germany.
As a doctoral candidate at Florida State University, Selim Giray studied with Eliot Chapo—former Concertmaster of such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic and the Dallas Symphony. Prior to that, in 1992 he was awarded a joint fellowship from the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra and East Carolina University, where he studied with Fritz Gearhart. A native of Istanbul, Selim Giray graduated from Istanbul State Conservatory and Mimar Sinan University State Conservatory, where he studied with Saim Akçıl (violin), and Roman Skřepek (conducting).
Through the years, Dr. Giray has recruited international students, including students from Paraguay, Romania, China, South Korea, and Turkey. His students have won numerous competitions, including various Concerto-Aria and Chamber Music Competitions, The American Protégé International Competition (2015), and the American String Teachers Association Solo Competition, Kansas Chapter (2006). Selim Giray’s students have been accepted into graduate programs at Yale University, Rice University, Stony Brook University, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Missouri‑Kansas City, and Florida State University with assistantships, and have received the Fulbright Scholarship. Some are members of orchestras, including the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Kansas City Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, and the Chicago Symphony, and others are professors and leaders at universities in the US and abroad. Selim Giray performs on an exquisite violin made by master luthier Anton Krutz.
Dr. Giray directs the LOU Symphony Orchestra.
[ LOU Symphony Orchestra webpage: https://symphony.olemiss.edu/ ]
[ Personal home page: http://www.selimgiray.com/ ]
