“Mr. Palmer’s playing is artful and elaborately nuanced with a dark soulful tone that is often compelling – a performance of rapt, meditative intensity.” NYT
Clarinetist Todd Palmer has appeared as soloist, recitalist, chamber music collaborator, educator, arranger, and presenter in a variety of musical endeavors around the world. A three time Grammy nominated artist, he has appeared as soloist with the Atlanta, Houston, BBC Scotland orchestras; St. Paul, New York, Cincinnati, Montréal, and Metamorphosen chamber orchestras, as well as many others. He’s collaborated with many of the worlds finest string ensembles such as the St. Lawrence, Brentano, Borromeo, Pacifica, Daedalus and Ying quartets; and has also shared the stage with sopranos Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming, Elizabeth Futral, Heidi Grant Murphy and Dawn Upshaw, and many other notable instrumentalists. He has championed Osvaldo Golijov’s Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind around the world and commissioned the theatre work Orpheus and Euridice by Ricky Ian Gordon which was presented by Great Performers at Lincoln Center in 2005 . He was a winner of the Young Concert Artist International Auditions, and has participated in numerous music festivals in the US and abroad including 18 years at Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC, 5 years at the Marlboro Festival and the Tanglewood Institute, where he was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship. He has also held principle clarinet positions in the Minnesota Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Lukes, the Gotham Chamber Opera and the Grand Teton Festival. In 2008 he premiered David Bruce’s Gumboots, a Carnegie Hall commission that was written especially for him and the St. Lawrence Quartet, and for two years appeared in Lincoln Center’s revival of South Pacific. Last season he appeared as soloist in Robert Lepage’s staging of Stravinsky’s The Nightingale and Other Fables at BAM – dressed as a Cossack. This season he performed the Mozart clarinet concerto as a part of Great Performers at Lincoln Center’s What Makes It Great series.
