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DMA, New England Conservatory (violin studio of Lucy Chapman; doctoral advisor, Helen Greenwald)
Diplom KA, Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (studio of Rainer Kussmaul)
BM, New England Conservatory (studio of Masuko Ushioda)
Benjamin Shute has enjoyed a multifaceted career as violin soloist, chamber musician, ensemble leader, orchestral player, teacher, musicologist, and composer.
Since his concerto debut as a teenager at the Opening Night Gala of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Stephen Gunzenhauser, he has collaborated as soloist with modern- and period-instrument orchestras in the States and Europe in concertos of Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven, Paganini, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Sibelius, as well as concert works from Bach to Sarasate to John Williams.
Having served as concertmaster-soloist with orchestras of the New England Conservatory and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, he co-founded and directed the New England Conservatory Early Music Society from 2009 to 2012, leading the ensemble in performances at venues including the Boston Early Music Festival Fringe. From 2011 to 2014 he was a regular concertmaster of the Boston Chamber Orchestra in concerts, recordings, and the orchestra's inaugural tour of Japan, also serving as leader-soloist with a number of freelance orchestras performing in venues including Boston Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall. After taking up a full-time university teaching post in Oklahoma, he was frequently invited as guest leader of ensembles including the Oklahoma Virtuosi and the Tactus Chamber Orchestra, also guest-directing historically informed programs of baroque music from the violin with ensembles including Cecilia’s Muse and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, with whom he held a tenured tier A first violin chair.
He has appeared in recital in Schloßkonzerte Bad Krozingen, the Boston Early Music Festival Fringe, the Wilmington Grand Opera House, and universities across the USA, with chamber music performances taking him to venues including the Kimmel Center (Philadelphia), Jordan Hall (Boston), the Philips Collection (Washington, DC), New York's Jewish Museum, An Die Musik (Baltimore), Château du Val (France), Landgrafenschloss Marburg (Germany), Santa Maria Assunto Positano (Italy), and the city halls of Sorrento (Italy) and Chichibu (Japan). His collaborators have included a diverse array of colleagues, including orchestral principals (Pittsburgh Symphony, RAI Symphony Turin, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Shenzhen Symphony, Apollo’s Fire, Boston Baroque, Handel & Haydn Society, etc.) and members of such ensembles as the Vienna and Lysander piano trios and the Formosa, Parker, Jasper, Blair, Carpe Diem and Diderot quartets. With harpsichordist and pianist Anastasia Abu Bakar he has appeared in Germany and across the USA as the Highlands Duo, performing music from the 17th to 21st centuries on period instruments. CD recordings include "In Sara Levy's Salon" with the Raritan Players (period instruments), the complete piano-violin sonatas of Brahms with pianist Kai-Ching Chang, and the violin-piano sonatas of Karén Khanagov with Anastasia Abu Bakar.
Musicological publications include the monograph Sei Solo: Symbolum? The Theology of J. S. Bach’s Solo Violin Works, which was deemed “very compelling” by the UK’s Early Music Review and was described in the American Record Guide as “one of the most rewarding books I have read on music.” His critical reconstructions of J. S. Bach’s lost D-minor violin concerto BWV 1052R and incompletely surviving D-major sinfonia BWV 1045, among other critical editions, are published by PRB Productions and have been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Liszt Academy Budapest, and the Staatstheater Mecklenburg. His original compositions and transcriptions have been heard at the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music and performed by ensembles including the Brandywine Baroque Orchestra and the Oklahoma Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra.
A committed teacher, he took up his first teaching position immediately upon completing his undergraduate, teaching violin and chamber music to high-school students at the Csehy Summer School of Music, where his students have gone on to study at leading conservatoires (Juilliard, Eastman, Cleveland Institute, New England Conservatory, Royal College of Music Stockholm, etc.) and to perform with orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Staatskapelle Dresden, Rochester Philharmonic, and Alabama Symphony.
From 2009 he taught in higher education, first as a teaching assistant at the New England Conservatory and subsequently in full-time and part-time positions at various universities, where his students have gone on to secure positions in performance and education, winning posts including Assistant Concertmaster of the Amarillo (Texas) Symphony. While on faculty at Oklahoma City University (2019-2022), he taught a broad swath of repertoire, including most of the standard and a variety of less-standard violin concertos, and introduced period instruments and historical performance practices of the 17th to 19th centuries into violin and chamber music studies. Together with Anastasia Abu Bakar, he co-led the university’s Early Music Ensemble, bringing it to national attention in the 2021 Early Music America Young Performers Festival and partnering with the university’s student-led opera company to produce Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas as well a new opera for period and electronic instruments written by OCU student composers. At other points in his academic career he has taught university courses in composition, analysis, harmony, music history, and related topics, making guest appearances as performer and teacher at MIT, Rutgers University, Wheaton Conservatory, the University of Delaware, and other universities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Kansas. Beginning in fall 2022 he teaches at the Laidlaw Music Centre of the University of St Andrews (Scotland).
Growing up in the beautiful Brandywine River valley of Wilmington, Delaware, USA, he received his earliest violin lessons from Kathleen Hastings before entering the studio of Lee Snyder at Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School. Subsequent mentors who deeply impacted him include Rainer Kussmaul (first concertmaster, Berliner Philharmoniker/Berliner Barock Solisten), Bernhard Forck (concertmaster, AKAMUS Berlin), Lucy Chapman, Masuko Ushioda, and Robert Hill.
He performs on a beautiful old Bolognese violin by Fr. Agostino Facini (1722), thanks to the generosity of Charles and Julie Cawley, as well as baroque violins by Joseph Ruddiman (Aberdeen, 1775) and Robert Brode (New Jersey, 2021, after the 1741 "Vieuxtemps" Guarneri).
Diplom KA, Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (studio of Rainer Kussmaul)
BM, New England Conservatory (studio of Masuko Ushioda)
Benjamin Shute has enjoyed a multifaceted career as violin soloist, chamber musician, ensemble leader, orchestral player, teacher, musicologist, and composer.
Since his concerto debut as a teenager at the Opening Night Gala of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Stephen Gunzenhauser, he has collaborated as soloist with modern- and period-instrument orchestras in the States and Europe in concertos of Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven, Paganini, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Sibelius, as well as concert works from Bach to Sarasate to John Williams.
Having served as concertmaster-soloist with orchestras of the New England Conservatory and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, he co-founded and directed the New England Conservatory Early Music Society from 2009 to 2012, leading the ensemble in performances at venues including the Boston Early Music Festival Fringe. From 2011 to 2014 he was a regular concertmaster of the Boston Chamber Orchestra in concerts, recordings, and the orchestra's inaugural tour of Japan, also serving as leader-soloist with a number of freelance orchestras performing in venues including Boston Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall. After taking up a full-time university teaching post in Oklahoma, he was frequently invited as guest leader of ensembles including the Oklahoma Virtuosi and the Tactus Chamber Orchestra, also guest-directing historically informed programs of baroque music from the violin with ensembles including Cecilia’s Muse and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, with whom he held a tenured tier A first violin chair.
He has appeared in recital in Schloßkonzerte Bad Krozingen, the Boston Early Music Festival Fringe, the Wilmington Grand Opera House, and universities across the USA, with chamber music performances taking him to venues including the Kimmel Center (Philadelphia), Jordan Hall (Boston), the Philips Collection (Washington, DC), New York's Jewish Museum, An Die Musik (Baltimore), Château du Val (France), Landgrafenschloss Marburg (Germany), Santa Maria Assunto Positano (Italy), and the city halls of Sorrento (Italy) and Chichibu (Japan). His collaborators have included a diverse array of colleagues, including orchestral principals (Pittsburgh Symphony, RAI Symphony Turin, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Shenzhen Symphony, Apollo’s Fire, Boston Baroque, Handel & Haydn Society, etc.) and members of such ensembles as the Vienna and Lysander piano trios and the Formosa, Parker, Jasper, Blair, Carpe Diem and Diderot quartets. With harpsichordist and pianist Anastasia Abu Bakar he has appeared in Germany and across the USA as the Highlands Duo, performing music from the 17th to 21st centuries on period instruments. CD recordings include "In Sara Levy's Salon" with the Raritan Players (period instruments), the complete piano-violin sonatas of Brahms with pianist Kai-Ching Chang, and the violin-piano sonatas of Karén Khanagov with Anastasia Abu Bakar.
Musicological publications include the monograph Sei Solo: Symbolum? The Theology of J. S. Bach’s Solo Violin Works, which was deemed “very compelling” by the UK’s Early Music Review and was described in the American Record Guide as “one of the most rewarding books I have read on music.” His critical reconstructions of J. S. Bach’s lost D-minor violin concerto BWV 1052R and incompletely surviving D-major sinfonia BWV 1045, among other critical editions, are published by PRB Productions and have been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Liszt Academy Budapest, and the Staatstheater Mecklenburg. His original compositions and transcriptions have been heard at the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music and performed by ensembles including the Brandywine Baroque Orchestra and the Oklahoma Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra.
A committed teacher, he took up his first teaching position immediately upon completing his undergraduate, teaching violin and chamber music to high-school students at the Csehy Summer School of Music, where his students have gone on to study at leading conservatoires (Juilliard, Eastman, Cleveland Institute, New England Conservatory, Royal College of Music Stockholm, etc.) and to perform with orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Staatskapelle Dresden, Rochester Philharmonic, and Alabama Symphony.
From 2009 he taught in higher education, first as a teaching assistant at the New England Conservatory and subsequently in full-time and part-time positions at various universities, where his students have gone on to secure positions in performance and education, winning posts including Assistant Concertmaster of the Amarillo (Texas) Symphony. While on faculty at Oklahoma City University (2019-2022), he taught a broad swath of repertoire, including most of the standard and a variety of less-standard violin concertos, and introduced period instruments and historical performance practices of the 17th to 19th centuries into violin and chamber music studies. Together with Anastasia Abu Bakar, he co-led the university’s Early Music Ensemble, bringing it to national attention in the 2021 Early Music America Young Performers Festival and partnering with the university’s student-led opera company to produce Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas as well a new opera for period and electronic instruments written by OCU student composers. At other points in his academic career he has taught university courses in composition, analysis, harmony, music history, and related topics, making guest appearances as performer and teacher at MIT, Rutgers University, Wheaton Conservatory, the University of Delaware, and other universities in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Kansas. Beginning in fall 2022 he teaches at the Laidlaw Music Centre of the University of St Andrews (Scotland).
Growing up in the beautiful Brandywine River valley of Wilmington, Delaware, USA, he received his earliest violin lessons from Kathleen Hastings before entering the studio of Lee Snyder at Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School. Subsequent mentors who deeply impacted him include Rainer Kussmaul (first concertmaster, Berliner Philharmoniker/Berliner Barock Solisten), Bernhard Forck (concertmaster, AKAMUS Berlin), Lucy Chapman, Masuko Ushioda, and Robert Hill.
He performs on a beautiful old Bolognese violin by Fr. Agostino Facini (1722), thanks to the generosity of Charles and Julie Cawley, as well as baroque violins by Joseph Ruddiman (Aberdeen, 1775) and Robert Brode (New Jersey, 2021, after the 1741 "Vieuxtemps" Guarneri).
