Nina Stern

clarinet and recorder

Nina Stern is one of North America's leading performers of the recorder and classical clarinet. In recent years she is also being hailed as an innovator in teaching school-age children to be fine young musicians.

A native New Yorker, Ms. Stern studied with Jeanette van Wingerden and Hans-Rudolf Stalder at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, where she received a soloist's Degree. From Basel, she moved to Milan, Italy where she was offered a teaching position at the Civica Scuola di Musica.

Ms. Stern performs regularly as soloist or principal player with prestigious ensembles such as The New York Collegium, New York City Opera, The New York Philharmonic, Concert Royal, Philharmonia Baroque, American Classical Orchestra and Boston Baroque, She has also appeared with Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, L'Orchestra della Scala (Milan), I Solisti Veneti, Hesperion XX and Taffelmusik.

Her numerous festival appearances have included performances under leading conductors such as Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock, Claudio Scimone, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, Jane Glover, Bruno Weil, Ton Koopman, Andrew Parrot and Jordi Savall.

She has recorded for Erato, Harmonia Mundi, Sony Classics, Newport Classics, Wildboar, Telarc and Smithsonian labels.

Ms. Stern is currently on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music where she directed the Historical Performance Program from 1989 to 1996. She has taught at the Five Colleges in Western Massachusetts and was twice a visiting professor at Oberlin Conservatory. Ms. Stern has been on the faculties of numerous workshops throughout the United States and in Europe.

Ms. Stern also serves as Director of Education for the New York Collegium, where she is co-founder of a successful hands-on music teaching project in inner city public school classrooms. This project involves instruction to entire classrooms on recorder and percussion, as well intensive after school instruction that includes classical guitar. With the support of their classroom teachers, over 250 New York City public school students now participate in weekly or twice weekly instruction.

The Washington Post applauded this program as a model in its "innovation in the classroom" series (Nov. 9, 2003). For this important work, Ms. Stern was awarded an Endicott Fellowship in 2003 and was honored in 2005 with the "Early Music Brings History Alive" Award, bestowed by Early Music America.

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