“If any contemporary violist continues to carry the torch of the composer-performer, it is Scott Slapin.”
Journal of the American Viola Society
“Slapin’s magnificient playing says ‘Bring it on!’”
Fanfare
“Scott Slapin is great! It's hard to imagine better performances.”
20th Century Violin Virtuoso Ruggiero Ricci
"Slapin is a real viola virtuoso..."
American Record Guide
"well designed music... emotionally expressive and varied"
Star Ledger, Newark, NJ
0:00 Bach Sonata No. 1 Fugue
0:39 Slapin South Hadley Mass (Adagio)
1:45 Lane Sonata No. 3 (Wind in the Trees)
2:30 Hindemith Sonata Op. 25, Nr. 1 (mvt 4)
3:02 Slapin Sonata in C for two violas (Andante)
4:10 Slapin Adventures in Ancestry (Part 1)
5:20 Slapin Intermezzo for two violas
7:06 Paganini Caprice No. 3
7:50 Slapin Sonata in G for violin and viola (Allegretto)
8:31 Bach Partita No. 2 (Chaconne)
10:00 Kreisler Praeludium and Allegro
11:22 Slapin Lullaby
12:03 Paganini Caprice No. 10
12:35 Ernst The Last Rose of Summer
One of Scott's compositions
Scott with his Iizuka viola and violin and two paintings by William Sorrow
Scott with a painting by Emanuel Vardi
Click here to listen to the Slapin Anthology.
BIO
Classical violist-composer Scott Slapin was born into a family of string players in New Jersey in 1974. At eighteen he was one of the youngest graduates of the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He studied violin/viola with Barbara Barstow and Emanuel Vardi and composition with Richard Lane. He began his career as the on-stage, solo violist for the Off-Broadway production of Orpheus In Love, a chamber opera about a viola-playing Orpheus. He gave countless recitals and made rare viola recordings of the twin-bibles of upper string playing: J.S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas and Paganini's 24 Caprices (transposed, but unarranged); his 1998 Sonatas and Partitas album was the first complete recording of its kind on viola, and he can be heard playing solo Bach, Paganini Caprices, and some of his own compositions on various soundtracks for film and TV. Scott has premiered solo works in Carnegie's Weill Hall and at international viola congresses, and he served as a committee member, judge, and performer for the inaugural Maurice Gardner Composition Competition. A former fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in California, he has been commissioned by the Primrose International Viola Competition and by the American Viola Society, where he was also an artist in residence. He played regularly with pianist Betty Rosenblum and the NYC-area Sutton Ensemble, in symphony orchestras from Cincinnati to São Paulo, and for more than twenty years as one half of the Slapin-Solomon Viola Duo with his wife, Tanya Solomon. Scott and Tanya won 'Best Chamber Performance of 2008' at New Orleans' Big Easy Entertainment Awards for one of their many duo recitals and taught at various colleges and academies in New England.
Scott currently teaches viola, violin, and composition worldwide via Skype from his home studio north of Burlington, Vermont. He has been giving recitals for more than thirty years on instruments by Hiroshi Iizuka; click on the following links to hear him play his Iizuka viola or violin (pictured below) in many videos at YouTube. Many of Scott's lyrical, Neo-Romantic compositions can be heard on The Slapin Anthology, which draws from nine albums of Scott's music recorded by the Slapin-Solomon Viola Duo, the Wistaria String Quartet, the Penn State Viola Ensemble, and the American Viola Quartet. He has written more than a dozen unaccompanied character pieces for viola; thirty viola duos; chamber music for strings; music for viola choir; concertos; a mass "for the dead violist"; and a two-viola, one-act opera about Cremonus, God of the Viola. Scott's recital works have been performed by hundreds of violists internationally, and his playing has received critical acclaim in Fanfare, Strad, Musical Opinion, Mundo Clásico, and the American Record Guide.