Cellist Clancy Newman has enjoyed an extraordinarily wide-ranging career, not only as a cellist, but also as a composer, producer, writer, and educator. First prize winner of the prestigious Naumburg International Competition and recipient of an Avery Fisher career grant, 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 has toured as a member of “Musicians from Marlboro” and performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
As a composer, he has expanded cello technique in ways heretofore thought unimaginable, particularly in his “Pop-Unpopped” project, where he writes solo cello caprices based on pop songs. He has also lectured on the Golden Ratio Method, a method of composition he invented, and has been featured on series by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. His piano quintet, commissioned by the Ryuji Ueno Foundation, was premiered at the opening ceremony of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC. Palindromic Variations, a string trio commissioned by violinist Tai Murray, was premiered at the Yale School of Music in December 2023.
An active educator, Newman is on the faculty of Princeton University, teaches at the Maine Chamber Music Seminar, and maintains a small private studio. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Kingston Chamber Music Festival commissioned him to produce four educational videos to assist school teachers, a project that involved script writing, set designing, video editing, animation, and acting.
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.
