Clancy Newman (born 1977) is an American

cellist The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 ...

and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. In 2001 he won first place in the

International Naumburg Competition The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation sponsors competitions and provides awards for young classical musicians in North America. Founded in 1925, it operates the prestigious Naumburg Competition. Foundation and concerts It was founded in 1925 by Wal ...

, and in 2004 he received an

Avery Fisher Career Grant {{third-party, date=November 2017 The Avery Fisher Career Grant, established by Avery Fisher, is an award given to up to five outstanding instrumentalists each year (since 2004, chamber music groups are also eligible). The Career Grants are a part o ...

. Newman was born in Albany NY in 1977, to Australian parents. At six he began taking cello lessons, and at 12 he received his first significant public recognition when he won a gold medal at the

Dandenong Dandenong is a southeastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, about from the Melbourne CBD. It is the council seat of the City of Greater Dandenong local government area, with a recorded population of 30,127 at the . Situated mainly ...

Festival in Australia, open to ages twenty-four and under. Newman went on to attend the Columbia-

Juilliard The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most elit ...

combined program, receiving a BA in English from Columbia and a Masters in Music from Juilliard. His teachers at Juilliard were Joel Krosnick and Harvey Shapiro.

Solo work

In 2001, Newman won first place in the

, and as a result he played a recital in

Alice Tully Hall Alice Tully Hall is a concert hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The hall is named for Alice Tully, a New York performer and philanthropist whose donations assist ...

. The recital included the world premiere of Kenji Bunch's "Broken Music", which the Naumburg Foundation commissioned. In 2004, he was the recipient of an

. His performance of his composition, "The Pizzicato Piece", was featured on A&E's "Breakfast With the Arts". Newman has performed as soloist in Australia, Asia, and Europe, as well as throughout the United States. He has soloed with such orchestras as the National Symphony,

Jacksonville Symphony The Jacksonville Symphony is an orchestra based in Jacksonville, Florida. Concert hall As one of a handful of American orchestras with its own dedicated concert hall, the Jacksonville Symphony performs the majority of its programs in the Robe ...

Hartford Symphony Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

Richmond Symphony The Richmond Symphony is based in Richmond, Virginia and is the largest performing arts organization in Central Virginia and one of the nation's leading regional orchestras. The organization includes a full-time orchestra with more than 70 musicians ...

, Santa Fe Symphony, and

North Carolina Symphony The North Carolina Symphony (NCS) is an American orchestra based in Raleigh, North Carolina, with sixty-six full-time musicians. The orchestra performs in Meymandi Concert Hall and performs occasionally with the Carolina Ballet and the Opera Com ...

, in such halls as

Alice Tully Alice Bigelow Tully (September 14, 1902 – December 10, 1993) was an American singer of opera and recital, music promoter, patron of the arts and philanthropist from New York. She was a second cousin of the American actress Katharine Hepburn. ...

Avery Fisher Avery Robert Fisher (March 4, 1906 – February 26, 1994) was an amateur violinist, a pioneer in the field of high fidelity sound reproduction, founder of the Philharmonic Radio Company and Fisher Electronics, and a philanthropist who donated m ...

, Weill,

Merkin __NOTOC__ A merkin is a pubic wig. Merkins were worn by sex workers after shaving their mons pubis, and are now used as decorative items, erotic devices, or in films, by both men and women. History and etymology The '' Oxford Companion to the ...

Jordan Hall Jordan Hall is a 1,051-seat concert hall in Boston, Massachusetts, the principal performance space of the New England Conservatory. It is one block from Boston's Symphony Hall. It is the only conservatory building in the United States to be de ...

, the

Kennedy Center The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (formally known as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and commonly referred to as the Kennedy Center) is the United States National Cultural Center, located on the Potom ...

, the

Kimmel Center The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is a large performing arts venue at 300 South Broad Street and the corner of Spruce Street, along the stretch known as the Avenue of the Arts in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is owned an ...

, and

Herbst Theatre The Herbst Theatre is an auditorium in the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in the Civic Center, San Francisco. The 928-seat hall hosts programs as diverse as '' City Arts & Lectures'', SF Jazz, and San Francisco Performances. Architect ...

Chamber music

Clancy Newman has attended the

Marlboro Music Festival The Marlboro Music School and Festival is a retreat for advanced classical training and musicianship held for seven weeks each summer in Marlboro, Vermont, in the United States. Public performances are held each weekend while the school is in sess ...

and has been a member of the

Chamber Music Society ''Chamber Music Society'' is the third studio album by American bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding. It was released on August 17, 2010 by Heads Up International. After Spalding's Grammy win for Best New Artist, the album re-entered the ''Bi ...

II of Lincoln Center. He is currently a member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians and the Clarosa piano quartet, and a former member of the Weiss-Kaplan-Newman trio (with pianist Yael Weiss and violinist Mark Kaplan).

Composing

Newman has maintained an interest in composition since early childhood, and the bulk of his output has been for

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

and cello solo. He has been a featured composer on the

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) is an American organization dedicated to the performance and promotion of chamber music in New York City. It is the largest organization of its kind in the country for chamber music. CMS's home is ...

's "Double Exposure" series and the Chicago Chamber Musicians' "Composer Perspectives" series, and has received commissions from Astral Artists, the Barnett Foundation, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, the Weiss-Kaplan-Newman trio, and the Silo Collective, among others. His ''Juxt-Opposition'' is available on a CD of new American music by the Weiss-Kaplan-Newman trio, alongside those of

Paul Schoenfield Paul Schoenfield, also spelled Paul Schoenfeld, is a classical composer. He is known for combining popular, folk, and classical music forms. Schoenfield was born in 1947 in Detroit, Michigan. He began to take piano lessons at the age of six, ...

Lera Auerbach Lera Auerbach (russian: Лера Авербах, born Valeria Lvovna Averbakh, russian: Валерия Львовна Авербах; October 21, 1973) is a Soviet-born American classical composer and concert pianist.

, and

Chen Yi Chen Yi may refer to: * Xuanzang (602–664), born as Chen Yi, Chinese Buddhist monk in Tang Dynasty * Chen Yi (Kuomintang) Chen Yi (; courtesy names Gongxia (公俠) and later Gongqia (公洽), sobriquet Tuisu (退素); May 3, 1883 – June ...

. His new piano quintet, ''Cherry Blossom Fantasy'', commissioned by th
Ryuji Ueno Foundation
will be premiered at the opening ceremony of the 2019

National Cherry Blossom Festival The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a spring celebration in Washington, D.C., commemorating the March 27, 1912, gift of Prunus × yedoensis, Japanese cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo City to the city of Washington, D.C. Ozaki gave ...

in Washington DC.

"Pop-Unpopped" project

From October 2014 until May 2016, Newman did a project that he calle
"Pop-Unpopped"
This involved writing a solo cello caprice inspired by whatever song was number 1 on the

US billboard charts The ''Billboard'' charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs and albums in the United States and elsewhere. The results are published in ''Billboard'' magazine. ''Billboard'' biz, the online extension of the ''Billboard'' charts, pr ...

on the first of each month, which he would then learn and post a video of himself playing at the end of the month. In this fashion, he wrote caprices based on songs by

Ed Sheeran Edward Christopher Sheeran (; born 17 February 1991) is an English singer-songwriter. Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire and raised in Framlingham, Suffolk, he began writing songs around the age of eleven. In early 2011, Sheeran independently r ...

Meghan Trainor Meghan Elizabeth Trainor (born December 22, 1993) is an American singer-songwriter and television personality. She rose to prominence after signing with Epic Records in 2014 and releasing her debut single "All About That Bass", which reached ...

Taylor Swift Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her discography spans multiple genres, and her vivid songwriting—often inspired by her personal life—has received critical praise and wide media coverage. Bor ...

and many others. The project ultimately led to extremely innovative new ways of playing the cello, including fingering with the right hand, plucking behind the finger, extensive

col legno In music for bowed string instruments, , or more precisely (, ), is an instruction to strike the string with the stick of the bow across the strings. History The earliest known use of in Western music is to be found in a piece entitled "Har ...

, bowing behind the bridge, and drumming.

The Golden Ratio Method

In 2007, Newman devised a new method of composing based on the way some types of trees grow new branches using the

golden ratio In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0, where the Greek letter phi ( ...

. Some notable compositions he wrote using this method include ''Juxt-Opposition'' (piano trio), ''From Method to Madness'' (cello and piano), and ''Palindromicanon'' (two cellos). In 2019, he released th
first
of a series of lecture videos explaining how this method works, and he has appeared as a guest lecturer at various schools and institutions talking about this method.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Newman, Clancy 1977 births Living people American classical cellists American male composers 21st-century American composers Composers for cello American people of Australian descent Musicians from Albany, New York Classical musicians from New York (state) 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century cellists