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 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: he premiered his Four Pieces for Solo Cello at the Violoncello Society in New York, his Sonata for Cello and Piano in New York's Weill Hall, and his Four Seasons of Life for cello and string orchestra with Symphony in C in Philadelphia. 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 music works, and has been a featured composer on series by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. His piano trio, Juxt-Opposition, is available on Bridge Records, and it uses a method of composition he invented called The Golden Ratio Method. In 2019, his new piano quintet, Cherry Blossom Fantasy, was premiered at the opening ceremony of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC.
Newman is currently working on two commissions, one for the Formosa String Quartet and the other for violinist Tai Murray.
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.
Newman is represented by Jonathan Wentworth Associates.