Judson
Griffin, baroque violin,
appears regularly in New York as concertmaster of
Concert Royal, Amor Artis, and the American Classical
Orchestra, among others. This season, in addition
to regular return engagements as concertmaster of
the Florida Pro Musica and Dallas Bach Society,
he was guest soloist and concertmaster with New
Trinity Baroque in Atlanta. He has been associated
with the Connecticut Early Music Festival for many
years as concertmaster, soloist, and conductor,
and is now in his third year as music director.
He served as concertmaster for the Maryland Handel
Festival's final years of its survey of Handel oratorios,
and as music director of the Clarion Music Society
in New York for its final year. He has been a principal
player with Helicon, the Boston Early Music Festival
Orchestra, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and
Apollo's Fire of Cleveland; and concertmaster of
the Philadelphia Classical Orchestra. Mr. Griffin
led an orchestra for dance performances at the Maggio
musicale in Florence, and led the Lobkowitz Quartet
in performances of Haydn's Seven Last Words in Germany.
He has toured with the English Concert and Trevor
Pinnock; played with the Akademie der alten Musik
in Berlin; with the Complesso barocco in Innsbruck,
Milan, and Venice; and has been a soloist at the
Festival de Clisson, France. Solo recitals have
been given in Boston, Detroit, Washington, D.C.,
in New York at Weill Recital Hall and Merkin Hall,
and in Alaska. Mr. Griffin is a graduate of the
Eastman School of Music and earned a doctorate at
The Juilliard School. He plays a baroque violin
by Gio. Paolo Maggini, Brescia, ca. 1610-20, and
a classical violin by Claude Pierray, Paris, 1707.
Mr.
Griffin's more than 60 recordings include new music
from the mid-1970s to early 1980s; quartets of Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven on period instruments with
the Smithson String Quartet, of which he was a member
for 10 years; the Schubert Octet with the European
ensemble Atlantis; recordings with Philharmonia
of San Francisco and Tafelmusik of Toronto, among
others; works of Richard Strauss, Elgar, and Barber
with the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra on modern
instruments strung in gut; and the Mozart Requiem
and Haydn Creation as concertmaster of Amor Artis,
all on period instruments. In an earlier career
Mr. Griffin was a prize-winning viola soloist and
champion of contemporary music; he was a member
of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, principal
viola of the Aspen Chamber Symphony for 5 years,
and a member of the New York Chamber Soloists; and
taught at Aspen, Juilliard, and the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro.