David Finckel

They have also directed their attention to expanding the organization's activities internationally with the establishment of residencies and concert series, including the Mecklenburg–Vorpommern Festspiele in Germany; Wigmore Hall in London; Teatro Mayor in Bogota, Colombia; White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia; Bach Inspiration in Taipei, Taiwan, and a teaching and performing residency with the Casual Classic/LG Chamber Music School in Seoul, South Korea.

Intent on expanding the presence of chamber music in Asia, in 2011, David Finckel assumed the Co- Artistic directorship of Chamber Music Today with Wu Han. An annual chamber music festival and institute with performances at venues including the IBK Chamber Hall of the new Seou Arts Center in Seoul, South Korea, the organization brings to the Far East the world's greatest chamber musicians.

In 2009, under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Finckel and his wife established a chamber music training workshop for young artists in Korea and Taiwan, intensive residency programs designed to bring student musicians into contact with an elite faculty of artists including pianist Leon Fleisher and violinist Arnold Steinhardt and have been instrumental in the expansion of the society's CMS Two program that invites outstanding young musicians from around the world through audition to join the CMS artist roster for an extended residency that includes both performance and educational outreach opportunities. Under his leadership, the residency program has expanded from two to three years and has greatly increased the level of participation of these young artists.

Finckel was instrumental in the formation of Music@Menlo's live recording series, Music@Menlo LIVE, which commercially releases live recordings from the festival each year. The label was launched in 2004 and has been praised as "probably the most ambitious recording project of any classical music festival in the world" (San Jose Mercury News). Close to one hundred live recordings have been released to date.

In 2004, Finckel and Wu Han were appointed Co-Artistic Directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, where they currently present around 200 concerts, lectures, master classes, and outreach events each season. The Chamber Music Society is recognized as one of the leaders in the field of chamber music in North America. In 2013, Finckel & Wu Han were invited to extend their appointment for a third five-year term, the longest tenure since that of founding Artistic Director Charles Wadsworth.

David Finckel and Wu Han created the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo in 2004. The institute offers a rigorous professional training ground and a wide array of performance opportunities to gifted young musicians who have been selected from conservatories, youth orchestras, and music programs nationally and internationally .

In 2003, Finckel co-founded Music@Menlo, an annual chamber music festival and institute in Silicon Valley that brings to the San Francisco Bay Area a lineup of accomplished musicians, scholars, educators, and musicologists, as well as a roster of gifted young artists, for an immersive three-week chamber music experience in the summer.

For two decades, with the Emerson String Quartet, Finckel taught at the University of Hartford's Hartt School. Finckel joined the faculty of Stony Brook University in 2002 as a member of the Emerson String Quartet; today he continues to coach chamber music there, lead master classes, and provide instrumental instruction.

In addition to his work as a performer, Finckel has established a reputation for his dynamic and innovative approach to the recording studio. In 1997, David Finckel and Wu Han launched ArtistLed, classical music's first musician-directed and Internet-based recording company, whose catalogue of nineteen albums has won widespread acclaim. BBC Music Magazine saluted the launch by featuring the company's debut album on the cover of its January 1997 issue. Finckel is a controlling participant in every aspect of the recording process, from selecting the repertoire and recording venue to setting the sound, running the sessions, constructing the edits, and determining the final mix. ArtistLed's Grammy Award-winning recording engineer is Da-Hong Seetoo.

Finckel performs and records frequently in collaboration with pianist Wu Han, whom he married in 1985. Since the 1990s, the two artists have toured widely year-round and have emerged as one of the most popular cello-piano duos on the musical scene today, appearing on the major chamber series in the United States and abroad. Finckel and Wu Han also often appear in concert with violinist Philip Setzer.

During the Emerson's years of significant development, from 1980 to 1985, David Finckel's life was altered by yet another professional association, when he met and performed with Taiwanese pianist Wu Han. Musically as one from their first encounter, their personal relationship developed steadily, and they married in 1985. The partnership inspired David to renew his commitment to the solo and duo literature, and in 1985 he captured, partnered by Wu Han, the first NEC Piatigorsky Prize, competing in the triple roles of soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. In an award ceremony in New York in 2012, they received Musical America's Musicians of the Year award.

At 17, David played for Mstislav Rostropovich, and soon after became the great cellist's first American pupil. His studies spanned a nine-year period, culminating in a performance of Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante with the Basel Symphony under Rostropovich's direction. Finckel was the first winner of the New England Conservatory Piatigorsky Artist Award, chosen from an international field for his excellence as soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. In 1979, he became a member of the award-winning Emerson String Quartet.

In the spring of 1979, David attended the Alice Tully Hall debut of his new friends, the Emerson String Quartet, and was soon asked to join the ensemble. David's first concert with the quartet was in his birthplace: Allentown, Pennsylvania, on October 6, 1979.

As a member of the Emerson String Quartet from 1979-2013, Finckel participated in over 30 acclaimed recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon label since 1987, was the recipient of nine Grammy Awards (including two for Best Classical Album, three Gramophone Awards, the coveted Avery Fisher Prize, Musical America's “Ensemble of the Year” and cycles of the complete Beethoven, Bartók, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich string quartets in the world's musical capitals. In 2016, Universal Music Group reissued the Emerson's entire Deutsche Grammophon discography in a 52-CD boxed set. Finckel ended his tenure with the quartet at the conclusion of the 2012–13 season. He was replaced by Paul Watkins.The other members of the ensemble include violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer who alternate in the first chair position and violist Lawrence Dutton. The Emerson Quartet took its name from the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.

David Finckel (born December 6, 1951) is an American cellist and influential figure in the classical music world. The cellist for the Emerson String Quartet from 1979 to 2013, Finckel is currently the co-artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, co-founder of the independent record label ArtistLed, co-artistic director and founder of Music@Menlo in Silicon Valley, co-artistic director of Chamber Music Today in Seoul, Korea, producer of Cello Talks, professor of cello at the Juilliard School, and visiting professor of music at Stony Brook University.