Schuyler Slack, cello

Cellist Schuyler Slack has performed in orchestral, chamber music, and recital settings across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan.  The Alexandria, VA native was appointed to the Richmond Symphony’s Kenneth and Bettie Christopher Perry Foundation Cello Chair in 2016. Previously he held the joint position of Artist in Residence at the University of Evansville and Principal Cellist of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also a member of the Des Moines Metro Opera Orchestra, Williamsburg Symphony, and is on the music faculty at Randolph-Macon College.  He performs frequently in the cello sections of major orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra and National Symphony, and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where his primary teachers were Cleveland Orchestra principal cellists Mark Kosower and Stephen Geber.

A devoted chamber musician and lover of string quartets, Schuyler has studied with and performed alongside members of the Tokyo, Orford, Cleveland, Brentano, Guarneri and Juilliard Quartets, and Donald and Vivian Weilerstein.  He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, and the Kennedy Center Concert Hall; as well as given recitals at some of the countries top music schools, such as the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan.

Equally committed to the music of living composers and crossover musical endeavors, Schuyler has commissioned and performed new compositions for the cello by composers Douglas Boyce, Steven Snowden, and Heather Stebbins, with projects funded by grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Allan and Margot Blank Foundation. Recent festival appearances include Scrag Mountain Music, Beethoven and Banjos, and the Appalachian Chamber Music Festival. He was praised by the Washington Post for his “excellent” contribution – noted for his “pluck and scrape effects!” – to a new music-theatre adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis that was taken to the Prague Fringe Festival in 2015.