Scott Slapin

Scott Slapin (born 1974) is an American violist and composer of music for the viola.

Career

Slapin has written five albums of recital music featuring the viola and was commissioned to write the required piece for the 2008 Primrose International Viola Competition. 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. At the age of eighteen he 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 recast as a viola player. In 2016, the Boise Philharmonic viola section commissioned a Slapin composition to "solo" with the Serenata Orchestra (another Boise ensemble). The fifteen minute, three movement work is titled "Cremonus' Revenge" for Viola Section and Orchestra. Slapin performs and records with his wife, Tanya Solomon, also a violist. They won 'Best Chamber Performance of 2008' at the Tribute to the Classical Arts in New Orleans. Slapin plays a viola built by Hiroshi Iizuka.

Recordings

Slapin was the first person to record the complete cycle of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas (originally for violin) on viola, a set which he rerecorded in 2006. He has premiered and recorded many 20th and 21st Century recital works featuring the viola, and he is the featured soloist on the first album produced by the American Viola Society. His 2008 recording, Paganini's 24 Caprices, marked the first time Paganini's 24 Caprices had been recorded on the viola since Emanuel Vardi in 1965.

Education

Slapin graduated at the age of eighteen from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Emanuel Vardi. In memory of Vardi, he wrote 'Capricious', a viola trio which references several of Paganini's Caprices. Slapin's Nocturne is dedicated to his composition teacher and mentor Richard Lane.