Scott Slapin (born May 18, 1974) is an American composer and violist.[1] Slapin began his composing career during his adolescence. In later years, he has performed as a viola soloist, with his wife in a duo, and as a member of orchestras including the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. Slapin has composed more than eighty works, including the required piece for the 2008 Primrose International Viola Competition. He played at the 36th and 38th International Viola Congresses. In 2008, he and his wife won the Best Chamber Performance award at the Tribute to the Classical Arts in New Orleans.
Slapin was born on May 18, 1974.[2][3] Both his parents were musicians; his mother played the cello, his father played bass instruments.[4] Slapin grew up in Lebanon Township, New Jersey.[4] He began studying music when he was 6.[5] Initially, he played the violin but switched to the viola.[4] His first music teacher was Barbara Barstow, who later served as the artistic director of the New Jersey Youth Symphony.[4]
Slapin attended a music high school in North Carolina[6] and was accepted at the Manhattan School of Music two years before finishing high school.[6] He graduated from the conservatory aged 17[5][6][7] where he studied under Emanuel Vardi.[8]
Career
Slaplin was a member of the New Jersey Youth Symphony from the age of 9.[6] When he was 13, he composed an opera that was included in a New Jersey Philharmonic Orchestra program.[9] His composition, Funeral Music, was performed by the Brunswick Symphony Orchestra in New Brunswick when he was 14.[10] The New Jersey Star Ledger described it as "quite sophisticated".[11]
When he was 18, Slapin was performing daily as the solo violist in the New York City production of Gerald Busby's Orpheus in Love, a chamber opera about Orpheus reborn as a viola player.[12] There, he became friends with the composer Richard Lane.[6]
Slapin was subsequently invited to premiere Busby's Muse for solo viola at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. Slapin also performed solo recitals and with ensembles in the United States and South America. He has composed for the Penn State Viola Ensemble, the Wistaria String Quartet, and is a former fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in California.[13] He plays solo Bach, Paganini Caprices, and his own compositions on various soundtracks for film and TV.[which?][citation needed]
Slapin often performs and records with his wife, Tanya Solomon, who is also a violist.[14] In 2005, the couple, who had been members of the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra for three years, fled New Orleans three days before Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home. After the storm, they relied on housing assistance from friends in Knoxville, Tennessee.[15] In the subsequent six months, Slapin and Solomon played numerous benefits in aid of the orchestra.[6][15] A month after the hurricane, Slapin was engaged on a one-year contract to the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.[6][15]
In 2008, the couple won "Best Chamber Performance of 2008" at the Tribute to the Classical Arts in New Orleans,[16] and they have premiered and recorded duos by numerous composers, including Gerald Busby, Bob Cobert, Richard Lane, Rachel Matthews, Patrick Neher, Frank Proto and David Rimelis.
Slapin has composed more than eighty works.[17][18] He was commissioned to write the required piece for the 2008 Primrose International Viola Competition.[8] He served on the committee for the first Maurice Gardner Composition Competition and co-premiered the winning work, Rachel Matthews' Dreams, at the 38th International Viola Congress.[19] Slapin plays a viola built by Hiroshi Iizuka.[20]
Recordings
Slapin's chamber music has been recorded by the Wistaria String Quartet, the Penn State Viola Ensemble, the American Viola Quartet, and the Slapin-Solomon Viola Duo.[21] Slapin was the first person to record the complete cycle of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas (originally for violin) on viola,[22] a set which he re-recorded in 2006.[20] He has premiered and recorded many 20th and 21st-century works for the viola, and he is the soloist on the first album produced by the American Viola Society.[23] His 2008 recording of his viola arrangement of the 24 Caprices by Niccolò Paganini was the first made on a viola in standard tuning since Emanuel Vardi in 1965.[24]
In memory of his teacher, Vardi, Slapin wrote Capricious, a viola trio which references several of Paganini's Caprices.[8] Slapin's Nocturne is also dedicated to his composition teacher and mentor Richard Lane[27] and can be heard, along with Slapin's Elegy-Caprice, in the final scenes of the American docudrama Secret Life, Secret Death.[citation needed] Slapin performed his Trauermusik at the memorial concert for his first violin and viola teacher, Barbara Barstow.[28]
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