Todd Palmer, clarinet (short bio)

Originally from Hagerstown, MD, clarinetist Todd Palmer has spent his entire adult musical life living  in New York City.  Beginning his instrument at age 16, he later entered the Mannes College of Music under the tutelage of renowned British clarinetist Gervase de Peyer and graduated the school with highest honors. Having been involved in an array of creative and diverse artistic presentations throughout his career, he has appeared as concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber music collaborator, educator, arranger, and presenter in a variety of musical endeavors around the world.  He has maintained a close and special relationship with composer Osvaldo Golijov since they were first introduced to one another in 1997. Since then, he has championed Golijov's quintet The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind in numerous performances with the St. Lawrence Quartet in the U.S., Canada and in Europe. As editor-in-chief of the piece for its publication, Mr. Palmer has worked extensively with Golijov on the score as well as the newly orchestrated version that he will premiere in California in April with conductor Jeffrey Kahane as part of the Magnum Opus commissioning project of the San Francisco Bay area. In 2001, Mr. Palmer was awarded a $20,000 recording grant from The National Foundation of Jewish Culture to make the premiere recording of Golijov's outstanding chamber music works for EMI Classics. This disc, which included Isaac the Blind ,  became one of the top ten best selling classical CDs of 2003, as well as receiving two Grammy nominations and the Prelude Award from the Netherlands for best chamber music recording of 2004.

   In addition to Osvaldo Golijov, Mr. Palmer has also had a long standing association with song and theater composer Ricky Ian Gordon for whom he commissioned the song cycle/mono drama Orpheus and Euridice in 1997. Unique in its concept, this work was iinitially conceived as a small chamber music piece for clarinet, soprano and piano. Since then, It has grown and evolved into not only one of the major contributions to the clarinet and chamber music literature of the 20th Century, but a one-of-a-kind piece of music, theater and dance for all performers involved. It had its world premiere in this version at the Rose Theater in October 2005 on the New Visions series of Great Performers at Lincoln Center.  

  Mr. Palmer has annual chamber music collaborations  with a variety of artists, such as the St. Lawrence, Borromeo and Brentano quartets, and for eight years has been a member of the extremely successful touring group Spoleto Chamber Music USA. He been a participant for 12 years at Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston SC, as well as many other summer music festivals in the US and Canada, and has also served as principle clarinetist of the Minnesota and Grand Teton Festival orchestras.  An avid arranger, Palmer has had many of  his arrangements performed at various venues around the country in addition to many annual broadcasts on NPR's Performance Today-most notably being his two chamber nonets of Weber's Invitation to the Dance and two suites from André Messager's ballet The Two Pigeons.

September 2005—please destroy previously dated material.