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CELLIST DARRETT ADKINS TO JOIN OBERLIN CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC FACULTY
MAY 8, 2003---Cellist Darrett Adkins is joining the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College. Robert K. Dodson, Dean of the Conservatory, announced that Adkins would be Assistant Professor of Cello beginning in the fall of 2003.
"Darrett Adkins' career is exceptionally promising," says Dodson. "His magnetism as a teacher and his compelling voice as a performer have contributed to his growing reputation in the world of music. Since he is a 1991 graduate of Oberlin with a bachelor of music degree in cello performance, we are delighted also to be able to welcome him home."
Adkins has been on the faculty of the Juilliard School, where he received his doctor of musical arts degree, for seven years. This season he joins the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he will teach cello and co-direct the string chamber music program.
Adkins New York debut
of Samuel Barber's Concerto, with Per Brevig conducting the Orchestra
of St. Luke's at Alice Tully Hall in 1999, prompted Strings magazine
to call him "an adventurous champion of contemporary music."
Adkins has won numerous prizes, including the Presser Music Award and
Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award, for which he appeared as soloist with the
Tokyo Philharmonic. He has performed as soloist with Tochio Soloisten,
the North Carolina Symphony, and the New Hampshire Symphony, among others.
Other performances include the 1999 American premiere of Franco Donatoni's
cello concerto Un Ruisseau sur l'Escalier and, in 1990, Birtwistle's
Meridian, both with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. With
only three days' notice, he made his professional debut at the Aspen Music
Festival in 2002 with James Conlon conducting Pierre Boulez' Messagesquisse.
Adkins was the "cellist of honor" at the 2002 International
Cello Encounter in Rio de Janeiro, where he gave master classes, recitals,
and concerto performances. King Harald of Norway attended his Oslo debut
at Aulaen Konsertsal in 1996.
Adkins is also an acclaimed chamber musician. The Houston Chronicle praised the "suave musicality" of his solution to the "substantial technical challenges" presented by Debussy's 1915 Cello Sonata in a November 2000 performance with the Zephyr Trio, of which he is a member. Featuring flutist Jeanne Galway and pianist Jonathan Feldman, the Zephyr Trio regularly tours the United States and Europe.
From 1997 until 2002 Adkins was a member of Flux, a string quartet dedicated to cutting-edge music. He has appeared with them at major festivals in New York, Melbourne (Australia), Ojai (Southern California), and Oslo (Norway). A 2001 recording Flux made of Morton Feldman's six-hour String Quartet No. 2 has been released this year on the Mode label; reviewer Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times praised its "warm, clear sound." Tommasini recalled that when Flux played the work at Cooper Union in Greenwich Village in 1999--the first performance of the quartet in its entirety--The New Yorker's Alex Ross described it as "a disorienting, transfixing experience that repeatedly approached and touched the sublime." In addition to the Mode label, Adkins has as a chamber musician recorded for the RCA, Tzadik, Koch, MMC, and CRI labels.
Adkins frequently steps outside the classical mainstream, collaborating with figures such as free-jazz legend Ornette Coleman and electronic pop wizard David Baron '90.
Besides receiving degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Norman Fischer, and the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Joel Krosnick, Adkins also earned a Master of Music degree from Rice University. He is originally from Tacoma, Washington.
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865, is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States, and is renowned internationally for the professional training opportunities it provides to aspiring professional musicians.
Media Contact: Marci Janas
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