Dr. Leonidas Sarakatsannis, UCF\u2019s first piano professor, died on April 9th, but his memory lives on in the students he inspired. He was part of UCF\u2019s Charter Class of professors in 1968, \u00a0and was also a composer and conductor.<\/p>\n
But the professor\u2019s accomplishments weren\u2019t just in the classroom.\u00a0Dr. Sarakatsannis was a member of Who\u2019s Who in America, the Marquis Who\u2019s Who in the World, and performed solo piano recitals throughout the U.S. and abroad. Locally, he played for the Florida Symphony Orchestra, the predecessor for the Orlando Philharmonic.<\/p>\n
Dr. \u00a0Sarakatsannis is\u00a0remembered as a charismatic teacher. \u201cHe taught theory, and several of us remember his can of sourballs candy sitting on the piano. Sometimes when we got an answer right, we could take a sourball from the can,\u201d said Jan Crews, who studied with Dr. Sarakatsannis from \u201969-\u201971.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was deeply admired, dearly loved, and will be greatly missed,\u201d said Crews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Leonidas Sarakatsannis, UCF\u2019s first piano professor, died on April 9th, but his memory lives on in the students he inspired. He was part of UCF\u2019s Charter Class of professors in 1968, \u00a0and was also a composer and conductor. But the professor\u2019s accomplishments weren\u2019t just in the classroom.\u00a0Dr. Sarakatsannis was a member of Who\u2019s Who in America, the Marquis Who\u2019s…","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[14915,4895],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-11870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-music","tag-ucf-history"],"yoast_head":"\n