Scott Conklin, violinist

Come and see Mr. Scott Conklin play!

Scott Conklin

Commended by The Strad for his “brilliance of tone and charismatic delivery,” Scott Conklin regularly appears as a recitalist, soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player, and teaching clinician throughout the United States and abroad. He is Associate Professor of Violin at The University of Iowa School of Music and a violin teacher at the Preucil School of Music. Conklin has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Louisville, Nashville, and Berlin Symphony Orchestras. Conklin is the 2008 Iowa String Teachers Association Leopold LaFosse Studio Teacher of the Year, and he has been a featured clinician and artist at the 2010 Suzuki Association of the Americas Conference and the 2004 Music Teachers National Association Conference.

In addition to performing from the heart of the standard repertoire, Conklin is an advocate of new music. Albany Records released Conklin’s album of contemporary American compositions with pianist Alan Huckleberry to critical acclaim. Violinguistics: American Voices was “urgently recommended” by Fanfare Magazine and was also highlighted, featured, and recommended by The Strad, which complimented the performers for their “interpretative eloquence, extreme technical precision, and an infectious brio that makes the whole disc enjoyable.”  Violinguistics features works by Kevin Beavers, William Bolcom, Ching-chu Hu, Joel Puckett, Kevin Puts, and Bright Sheng. Conklin’s recording of A Tempered Wish for Solo Violin and Chamber Orchestra (2003) by Ching-chu Hu was released on the album Vive Concertante! by Albany Records. He has also performed works by Luke Dahn, Franco Donatoni, and Jeremy Dale Roberts on the same record label. In 2009, Ching-chu Hu wrote and dedicated a new work to Conklin called The Hope Moment for Violin and Piano (2012). Composer Joel Puckett of the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University also expanded his BMI award-winning composition Colloquial Threads for Violin and Piano (2003) into a new four-movement violin concerto called Southern Comforts for Violin, Orchestral Winds, Bass, Piano, and Percussion (2008). Both works were written for and dedicated to Conklin. Recently, Conklin appeared on a concert tour of Germany with pianist Alan Huckleberry, and repeatedly performed the complete violin and piano works by Brahms over successive nights with pianist Uriel Tsachor. The latter project included Brahms’s very own violin and piano transcriptions of the Op. 120 Sonatas Numbers 1 and 2 for clarinet/viola and piano.

Conklin filmed the pedagogical/violin master class DVD on Sound Innovations for String Orchestra by Bob Phillips, Peter Boonschaft and Robert Sheldon, which was released internationally by Alfred Music in June of 2010. Conklin is a former faculty member of The University of Texas at Arlington, and he also taught on several occasions as a substitute violin professor at The University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music. In the summer months, Conklin has served and/or continues to serve on the faculty of The University of Iowa All-State Camp, Sound Encounters (Kansas), American Suzuki Institute (Wisconsin), Ottawa Suzuki Institute Mid-Southwest and Young Artist Camp (Kansas), DFW WOW (Texas), and the Interlochen Arts Camp All-State Division (Michigan) among many others. During the academic year, Conklin teaches at many clinics, conferences, workshops, and educational settings throughout the country and serves on the Editorial Board of the American Music Teacher, the official magazine of the Music Teachers National Association. Conklin also holds the honorary distinction of being a “Kentucky Colonel,” a title given to him by Governor Wallace G. Wilkinson.

During his youth, Conklin was a student of Carol Dallinger, Violin Professor at the University of Evansville. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from The Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied violin with David Updegraff and chamber music with Peter Salaff. Conklin also earned Master of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts degrees from The University of Michigan School of Music as a student of Paul Kantor.