Eugene Drucker

Visiting Professor; Violin and Chamber Music
Ensemble-in-Residence; Emerson String Quartet

Eugene Drucker is a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet and Music Director of the Bach at New Year’s concerts for The Berkshire Bach Society. He has appeared as a solo violinist with the orchestras of Montreal, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Hartford, Richmond, Omaha, Jerusalem, and the Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Aspen Chamber Symphony, and the Las Vegas Philharmonic. A graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, he served for two years as concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra, which featured him several times as a soloist. He made his New York debut as a Concert Artists Guild winner in the fall of 1976, after having won prizes at the Montreal Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. He has recorded the complete unaccompanied works of Bach (Parnassus Records), the complete sonatas and duos of Bartók (Biddulph Recordings), and (with the Emerson Quartet) works ranging from Bach and Haydn to contemporary repertoire, mostly for Deutsche Grammophon. A nine-time Grammy and three-time Gramophone Magazine Award winner, he is visiting professor of chamber music at Stony Brook University. 

In 2008 his original setting of four Shakespeare sonnets was premiered by baritone Andrew Nolen and the Escher String Quartet at Stony Brook.  The songs have since appeared as part of the two-CD release Stony Brook  Soundings   by Bridge  Recordings.   Additional compositions include "Madness and the Death of Ophelia," based on four scenes from "Hamlet"; "At The Edge of The Cliff," a setting of five poems by Denise Levertov, for soprano and string quartet; and "Series of Twelve," a string quartet commissioned by the New Music for Strings Festival, which premiered in Copenhagen and Reykjavik in August 2018. The Escher Quartet gave the official U.S. premiere of this 12-movement Suite in November 2021, and reprised it in New York City in March 2022. "Of Troubled Times," a song cycle for mezzo-soprano, violin and cello, has been performed several times in the spring of 2022. Mr. Drucker’s first novel, "The Savior," was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007 and subsequently appeared in a German translation called "Wintersonate." A second novel, "Yearning," was published in the fall of 2021.

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