Music Mountain Announces Oskar Espina-Ruiz For Summer 2017 Artistic Director

Music Mountain, America's Oldest Continuing Summer Chamber Music Festival, announces award-winning clarinetist Oskar Espina-Ruiz to be the new Artistic Director. Mr. Espina-Ruiz will begin his new position for the 2017 summer season.

Music Mountain President Nicholas Gordon praises Mr. Espina-Ruiz' accomplishments, "Mr. Espina-Ruiz has enormous talent combined with the wide experience necessary for this multi-faceted job. He is a brilliant musician with wide experience, particularly in chamber music. He is an experienced administrator and he is a gifted teacher, able to continue to make Music Mountain's teaching programs unique and in demand by talented students."

Oskar Espina-Ruiz has been described by the press as a "masterful soloist" and a "highly expressive" clarinetist. Over the past ten years Mr. Espina-Ruiz has performed at major concert halls and festivals to high critical acclaim, including concerto performances at the Philharmonic Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia, and recitals in New York City, Washington DC, Moscow, Madrid, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. He has appeared as soloist with the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony (Russia), St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic (Russia), Orquesta Sinfónica de la Ciudad de Asunción (Paraguay) and Bilbao Symphony (Spain). His chamber music collaborations include the American, Shanghai, Cassatt, Escher and Daedalus quartets, the Quintet of the Americas, pianists Benjamin Hochman, Ursula Oppens and Anthony Newman, cellist David Geber (founder, American String Quartet) and Metropolitan Opera Orchestra artists.

Mr. Espina-Ruiz has recorded for the Bridge, Kobaltone and Prion labels, receiving high critical acclaim by fellow clarinetists Richard Stoltzman and Charles Neidich for his solo recording "Julián Menéndez Rediscovered." He holds a DMA from Stony Brook University, where his major teachers were Charles Neidich and Ayako Oshima. Mr. Espina-Ruiz is artistic director of the Treetops Chamber Music Society in Stamford, CT since 2006. Since 2011 he is Artist/Asst. Professor of Clarinet at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC where he serves on the committee of the Chrysalis Chamber Music Institute, in partnership with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Music Mountain is located in Falls Village, Connecticut on Music Mountain Road, where a short scenic drive will bring you to GorDon Hall atop Music Mountain. Free parking and picnic facilities are available.

Music Mountain is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission On Culture & Tourism and the National Endowment for the Arts.

(Photo Credit: Music Mountain)

To post a comment, you must register and login.