Scott Slapin's compositions have been performed by hundreds of musicians in concert halls throughout the Americas and Europe; at international competitions/workshops including the ARD, Primrose, and Tertis; and on eight albums of violacentric chamber music. A prolific composer of music for viola, Scott has written numerous works for (click on links for playlists at YouTube) viola duo, viola choir, various ensembles with viola, string quartet, solo viola, as well as an all-viola symphony, an all-viola opera, a concerto for multiple violas and full symphonic orchestra and two books of educational materials for beginning upper string players: 24 Etudes and 12 Divertimenti.
Scott is the first person to have recorded the complete cycle of J.S. Bach Sonatas and Partitas on viola, and he is the featured soloist for many premiere recordings by 20th and 21st Century composers including the first album produced by the American Viola Society, Premieres. His solo playing has received critical acclaim in the American Record Guide, Fanfare, Mundo Clásico, Musical Opinion, and Strad, and he has been profiled in the Journal of the American Viola Society, Strings, several dissertations, and radio programs thoughout the US and abroad.
For more than twenty years, Scott and his wife violist Tanya Solomon have been performing as the award-winning Slapin-Solomon Viola Duo. They have given countless recitals, appeared at international viola congresses, premiered and recorded many new works, and made dozens of arrangements. They spent their first few years together playing throughout the US and South America as members of several orchestras.
At eighteen, Scott was one of the youngest graduates of the Manhattan School of Music, where he was the youngest student in the studio of virtuoso violist Emanuel Vardi's (1917-2011). His main composition teacher was Richard Lane (1933-2004). Scott made his debut as the solo violist in the 1992-1993 NYC production of Gerald Busby's Orpheus In Love, a chamber opera about a viola-playing Orpheus, and he premiered Busby's Muse for Solo Viola in Carnegie's Weill Hall. He gave many solo recitals and can be heard playing excerpts of his own compositions as well as solo Bach and Paganini Caprices on various film and tv soundtracks. He has taught/given masterclasses at several academies and colleges in the Northeast and is a former fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in California.
