Nicholas Walker

Guest Musician

Nicholas Walker is a musical omnivore, a musician who brings a broad range of training and experience to the double bass - classical and jazz, modern and baroque, concertos, solo recitals, chamber music, and orchestral work. As an orchestral musician, Walker has freelanced with the Oslo Philharmonic, the National Arts Center Orchestra of Canada, the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, and the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra. Walker has been featured on CDs in many genres, and has frequently been heard on NPR's Performance Today. As a soloist he has premiered a concerto by Dana Wilson as well as his own compositions, and was featured at several International Society of Bassist Conventions, Michaelstein Kaleidoskop, the Beijing International Double Bass Festival, Berlin Bass 2010, and BassLucca 2018.

A Fulbright Scholar, Walker has diplomas from Rice University, the Nadia Boulanger Conservatoire de Paris, and Stony Brook University; earning his Doctorate in early music at Stony Brook University in 2004. Today Walker is a Professor of Music at Ithaca College, and President of the International Society of Bassists. He has given masterclasses and performances at music centers around the world, including guest residencies at conservatories in the U.S.A. and Canada, Seoul, Amsterdam, the Hague, Oslo, Hanover, Leipzig, Rostock, Adelaide, St. Petersburg, Dublin, Belfast, and Beijing.

As a composer Walker has published two double-bass concertos, several chamber works, and two sets of duets for double bass & violin/viola/cello/or bass, as well as works for solo bass, one of which won first prize in the ISB Composition Competition in 1997, and was premiered by acting principal for CPCO this week, Jeremy Kurtz-Harris. Many of these pieces can be heard on his YouTube page.

Official site