"Slapin is a real viola virtuoso..." (American Record Guide) Scott Slapin has given hundreds of recitals and is a featured solo and chamber musician on dozens of recordings. With his wife, violist Tanya Solomon, he has been concertizing as the award-winning Slapin-Solomon Viola Duo for more than twenty years. Scott is the first person to have recorded the complete set of J.S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas on viola, a cycle he has often featured in recital, and he can be heard playing solo Bach, Paganini Caprices, and his own compositions on various soundtracks for film and TV. He is a former artist in residence at the American Viola Society and the Montalvo Arts Center in California, and his solo playing has received critical acclaim in Fanfare, Strad, the American Record Guide, Mundo Clásico, and Musical Opinion.
Born into a family of string players in 1974, Scott studied composition with Richard Lane and violin/viola with Barbara Barstow and Emanuel Vardi. At eighteen, he was one of the youngest graduates of the Manhattan School of Music, and he was performing daily as the solo violist for the New York City production of Orpheus In Love, a chamber opera about a viola-playing Orpheus. Scott soloed with and wrote for orchestras, performed regularly as a chamber musician, played in symphony orchestras from Cincinnati to São Paulo, and taught at colleges and academies in the Northeast. Over the past two decades, Scott and Tanya have expanded the repertoire for two violas through many premieres, their own pioneering arrangements, and Scott's compositions. Their duo albums have garnered praise in Strad, the New York Violist, the All Music Guide, and the Journals of the American and Canadian Viola Societies.
One of the leading violist-composers of his generation, Scott has written more than sixty published works, and his solo and chamber music has been performed by hundreds of violists in recital halls throughout the world as well as at major competitions/workshops including the ARD, Primrose, and Tertis. Scott served as a committee member, judge, and performer for the inaugural Maurice Gardner Composition Competition and has been commissioned by the American Viola Society and the Primrose International Viola Competition. Many of his Neo-Romantic violacentric recital compositions can be heard on ten-plus albums by the Slapin-Solomon Viola Duo, the Wistaria String Quartet, the Penn State Viola Ensemble, Viola Around the World, Pioneer Valley Strings, and the American Viola Quartet. "If any contemporary violist continues to carry the torch of the composer-performer, it is Scott Slapin" (Journal of the American Viola Society)
Scott and Tanya have been teaching online for more than a decade and have reached students on five continents via Skype. Scott teaches viola, violin, composition, and music theory. Scott and Tanya make their home in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Click here to visit their YouTube channel.
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