Violinist Benjamin Shute has performed across North America, Europe, and Asia on modern and period

instruments as concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, director, and leader of ensembles including the Boston Chamber Orchestra. After early studies with Lee Snyder in Philadelphia, he studied at the New England Conservatory (BM, DMA) and the conservatoires of Freiburg and Frankfurt, where mentors included Rainer Kussmaul (1st concertmaster, Berliner Philharmoniker/Berliner Barock Solisten), Bernhard Forck (concertmaster, AKAMUS Berlin), Lucy Chapman, and Masuko Ushioda.

 

A committed educator, he taught in US higher education for a decade before moving to Scotland, where he now teaches at the University of St Andrews Music Centre.

 

As a composer, he has been a finalist for The American Prize, and his works have been heard in the US and UK at venues including the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music.

 

Other outputs include the book Sei Solo: Symbolum? The Theology of J. S. Bach's Solo Violin Works; critical reconstructions of J. S. Bach's lost D-minor violin concerto BWV1052 and incompletely surviving D-major sinfonia BWV1045; articles for The Strad and Strings Magazine; and various critical editions, transcriptions, and historically informed cadenzas. His forthcoming volume The Harmonic Violinist (Oxford University Press) aims to break down barriers between performance/interpretation and composition/improvisation by instilling kinaesthetic contrapuntal-harmonic sensibilities in violinists' hands, much as partimenti would historically have done for keyboard players.