Clancy Newman | Solo Concert

Clancy Newman 

Cellist Clancy Newman, first prize winner of the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg
International Competition and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, has had the
unusual career of a performer/composer. From Albany, NY, he began playing cello at
the age of six, and at twelve he received his first significant public recognition when he
won a Gold Medal at the Dandenong Youth Festival in Australia, competing against
contestants twice his age. In the years that followed, he won numerous other
competitions, including the Juilliard School Cello Competition, the National Federation
of Music Clubs competition, and the Astral Artists National Auditions.
He has performed as soloist throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia,
Canada, and Australia. He can often be heard on NPR’s “Performance Today” and has
been featured on A&E and PBS. A sought after chamber musician, he is a member of the
Clarosa piano quartet and the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and a former member of
Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center and the Weiss-Kaplan-Newman trio. He
has also toured as a member of “Musicians from Marlboro”.
He developed an interest in composition at an early age, writing his first piece at seven, a
piece for solo cello. Since then, he has greatly expanded the cello repertoire, including
pieces for solo cello, cello ensemble, cello and piano, and his Four Seasons of Life for
cello and string orchestra. His “Pop-Unpopped” project, in which he writes solo cello
caprices based on pop songs, has been ongoing since 2014 and has led to an exploration
of cello techniques heretofore unimagined. He has also written numerous chamber
works, having been a featured composer on series by the Chamber Music Society of
Lincoln Center and the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and his piano trio, Juxt-Opposition,
is available on Bridge Records. In March 2019, Cherry Blossom Fantasy, a piano quintet
commissioned by the Ryuji Ueno Foundation, was premiered at the opening ceremony of
the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC.
Mr. Newman is a graduate of the five-year exchange program between Juilliard and
Columbia University, receiving a M.M. from Juilliard and a B.A. in English from
Columbia. His teachers have included David Gibson, Joel Krosnick and Harvey Shapiro.