Edwin Barker

Boston Symphony Orchestra Principal Bass Edwin Barker holds the BSO’s Harold D. Hodgkinson Chair. He has concertized in North America, Europe, and East Asia, has performed and recorded with the BSO, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and Collage New Music, and is a frequent guest performer with the Boston Chamber Music Society. Barker gave the world premieres of James Yannatos’ Concerto for Contrabass and Chamber Orchestra—which was written especially for him—and of Theodore Antoniou’s Concertino for Contrabass and Chamber Orchestra, as well as the joint world premiere, with the BSO, of John Harbison’s Concerto for Bass Viol, which he recorded with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He was soloist in the New England premiere of Gunther Schuller’s Concerto for Double Bass and Chamber Orchestra. Barker graduated with honors in 1976 from New England Conservatory, where he studied double bass with Henry Portnoi and was awarded the Chadwick Medal. His other teachers included Peter Mercurio, Richard Stephan, Angelo LaMariana, and David Perleman. That same year, at age 22, while a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he was appointed principal double bass of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, becoming the youngest principal player in the orchestra’s history. Barker was a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow in 1975 and received the Delson Award for Most Outstanding Instrumentalist. Barker inaugurated the BSO’s 100th anniversary season with performances of Koussevitzky’s Double Bass Concerto. Other solo engagements have included appearances at Seiji Ozawa Hall, Carnegie Recital Hall, and major universities and conferences throughout the world, as well as concerto performances with the Boston Classical Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston and Europe. In July 1995 he was chosen by Sir Georg Solti to lead the bass section of the United Nations’ Musicians of the World, an ensemble made up of prominent musicians from the world’s finest orchestras. Barker is an associate professor at Boston University College of Fine Arts, where he teaches double bass, orchestral techniques, and chamber music. His other major teaching affiliations include the BSO’s Tanglewood Music Center, where he served as chair of instrumental and orchestral studies, and the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland. His solo CDs include Three Sonatas for Double Bass (Schubert, Hindemith, and Vivaldi); Chamber Music of James Yannatos (Yannatos’ Variations for Solo Contrabass), Concerti for Double Bass, which includes concertos by Gunther Schuller and Theodore Antoniou, and most recently Basso Profondo, featuring music of Bach and Weinberg.