Paul Dykstra supported choral and keyboard activities at Temple Sholom of Chicago for more than 25 years. As a collaborative pianist, he has dedicated his career to chamber music and to exposing the world to the music lost in the Nazi Holocaust of World War II. He has performed as a special guest of the Singer Festival in Warsaw, Poland, debuting the chamber music (piano trio) of Mieczyslaw Weinberg and other great Jewish composers.

As the Musical Director and Conductor of the Chicago-based Lira Singers and Founding Conductor of the Lira Symphony Orchestra, Dykstra spent more than 15 years bringing the opera and classical music of Poland to audiences throughout the United States. He conducted recordings and led performances with Lira at Chicago’s famed Symphony Center.

A summa cum laude graduate of the College of Fine Arts at the University of South Dakota, Dykstra has studied piano with Ani Gogova and Ludmilla Lazar of the Chicago College of Performing Arts, James Mathis of the Juilliard School and conducting with Jan Meyerowitz of the Metropolitan Opera while studying Opera at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.