Born in Taiwan and raised in Florida, clarinetist Elisha Willinger leads a versatile career as a chamber musician, soloist, educator, and orchestral performer. His appearances have included performing with the orchestras of Baltimore, North Carolina, Virginia, Richmond, Charleston, New World, and as principal with the New Haven Symphony. He has also performed chamber music with members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
He has won competitions and holds prizes from the 2012 Yamaha Young Performing Artists competition, 2017 Yale Chamber Music Society, and the 2019 International Clarinet Association’s orchestral competition. He has performed in the US, Europe, and Canada and was soloist with The Royal Conservatory Chamber Orchestra. In 2018 he made his debut at Carnegie Hall in Weill Recital Hall as part of the Yale in New York series. He has spent summers performing as a fellow with the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, Sarasota, Norfolk, American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, among others.
Dr. Willinger is an avid educator currently serving on the faculties of Washington & Lee and Radford Universities in Virginia. Previously, he served as a Yale undergraduate clarinet instructor, Teaching Artist for Yale’s Music in the Schools Initiative in New Haven’s public schools, and as the Graduate Instructor at the University of Michigan. As part of the Willinger Duo ensemble with his brother, pianist Lior Willinger, he is dedicated to new music and undergoing commissioning projects as they seek to expand the canon of clarinet and piano music by composers of underrepresented backgrounds.
He holds graduate degrees from Yale University, University of Michigan, and The Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School in Toronto. His major teachers include distinguished clarinetists David Shifrin, Joaquin Valdepeñas, and Ixi Chen. He earned his Bachelor of Music from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. At the University of Michigan, he earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree under the guidance of Daniel Gilbert and Chad Burrow.
Award-winning pianist Lior Willinger performs as a solo and chamber artist in the US and abroad. At the age of 19, he made his New York concerto debut at Carnegie Hall performing Piano Concerto No. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich. He won grand prize and audience prize in the Camerata Artists International Piano Competition following his performance of Piano Concerto No. 3 by Sergei Prokofiev at Merkin Hall.
An avid chamber musician, Mr. Willinger has collaborated in recitals with musicians of the Boston Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and Minnesota Orchestra. He currently serves as Director of the Homewood Chamber Music Seminar, coaching student chamber groups at Johns Hopkins University. Passionate about the music of our time, Mr. Willinger has premiered countless works and has released a 10-part commissioning/performance/video/article series on I CARE IF YOU LISTEN called Active Listening. Each work in the project hopes to bring awareness and action to a social justice issue chosen by the composer.
Mr. Willinger earned the Bachelor of Music degree and the Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory, where he is currently pursuing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree with renowned artist-teacher, Yong Hi Moon. During his graduate studies, Peabody Conservatory honored Mr. Willinger with the Sidney Friedberg Prize in Chamber Music and the Presser Music Award "given to a student demonstrating excellence and outstanding promise for a distinguished career in the field of music.”
Active in the Baltimore community, Mr. Willinger performs weekly for infusion patients at Sinai Hospital’s Lapidus Cancer Institute. He is the Founder/Artistic Director of the If Music Be the Food concert series in Baltimore which acts to increase support and awareness for those struggling with food insecurity. The series, which partners with Maryland Food Bank, has raised thousands of meals for those in need. He has also serves as faculty and resident pianist for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Orchkids program which provides a free music education to students in impoverished areas.
