Biography

David Shifrin

Winner of the coveted Avery Fisher Prize, David Shifrin has long been one of the most highly respected American clarinetists for his work as orchestral soloist, recitalist, chamber music collaborator and educator.

Mr. Shifrin has appeared with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras and the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit, Fort Worth, Hawaii and Phoenix symphonies among many others in the US; and internationally with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. He has also received critical acclaim as a recitalist, appearing at such venues as Alice Tully Hall, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York City, as well as at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. A much sought after chamber musician, he has collaborated with such distinguished ensembles and artists as the Guarneri, Tokyo, Emerson, Orion, Dover and Miro String Quartets, trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, and pianists Emanuel Ax, Andre Previn and André Watts.

An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, David Shifrin served as the organization’s Artistic Director from 1992 to 2004. He has toured extensively throughout the US with CMS and hosted and performed in several national television broadcasts on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center. He concluded his tenure with Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon in summer 2020 after having been the festival’s Artistic Director since 1981. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival.

In addition, he served as principal clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), the Honolulu, Dallas and New Haven symphonies, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the New York Chamber Symphony.

David Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987and since 2008 has been Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale's annual concert series at Carnegie Hall. In January 2022, he was named the Samuel S. Sanford Professor in the Practice of Clarinet. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii.

Mr. Shifrin has been instrumental in broadening the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra by commissioning and championing the works of 20th and 21st century American composers including John Adams, Joan Tower, Stephen Albert, Bruce Adolphe, Ezra Laderman, Lalo Schifrin, David Schiff, John Corigliano, Bright Sheng, Ellen Zwilich, Alvin Singleton, Hannah Lash, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Valerie Coleman, Richard Danielpour and Peter Schickele.

Mr. Shifrin's recordings on Delos, DGG, Angel/EMI, Arabesque, BMG, SONY, and CRI have consistently garnered praise and awards. He has received three Grammy nominations and his recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, performed in its original version on a specially built elongated clarinet, was named Record of the Year by Stereo Review. Recent releases include the Beethoven, Bruch and Brahms Clarinet Trios with cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han on the ArtistLed label and a recording for Delos of works by Carl Nielsen, which includes the first recording of the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto arranged for chamber orchestra. In 2018, Delos released a recording of three clarinet quintets which were written for Mr. Shifrin by Peter Schickele, Richard Danielpour and Aaron J. Kernis with the Miro, Dover and Jasper Quartets respectively, as well as a second volume of clarinet quintets featuring David Schiff’s arrangement of Duke Ellington pieces. In early 2021, the Musica Solis label released a recording of original music and several newly arranged works for clarinet by Francis Poulenc.

In addition to the Avery Fisher Prize, David Shifrin is the recipient of a Solo Recitalists' Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the 2016 Concert Artist Guild Virtuoso Award. He received an Honorary Membership to the International Clarinet Society in recognition of lifetime achievement and at the outset of his career, he won prizes at both the Munich and the Geneva International Competitions. He is also the recipient of Distinguished Alumni Awards from the Interlochen Center for the Arts and the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, and a Cultural Leadership Citation from Yale University. In January 2018 he received the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award at the Chamber Music America Conference, an award which recognizes an individual or entity who has provided historic service to the small ensemble music field.

Mr. Shifrin performs on a Backun “Lumiere” cocobolo wood clarinet made by Morrie Backun in Vancouver, Canada and uses Légère Reeds exclusively.

Biography

David Shifrin

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