Daniel Spink

About Daniel

Daniel Spink is an award-winning performer and collaborator with living composers. He has premiered and recorded new works for both solo viola and string quartet. He performs internationally as a solo, chamber, orchestral musician, and teacher with violin and viola and with the string quartet, Kodak Quartet. Spink regularly performs in outreach, including past solo appearances with Central City Opera’s Inside the Orchestra chamber music performances for Merkin Hall’s “Bridges” series; Eastman School’s Music for All series; and the Rochester Early Music Festival for Coffee Connection and was a member of CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra.

Spink made his solo debut with orchestra at age 10 on violin. A lover of cross-genre improvisation, he teaches and regularly performs in improvised concerts. In 2016, Spink was a finalist in the American Viola Society Festival’s National Solo Competition. Spink is a prizewinning chamber musician known for his quartet playing, performing internationally with Kodak Quartet and other ensembles including New Asia Chamber Music Society and Sirius Quartet, with regular appearances in New York at Carnegie Hall.

As a teacher, Spink maintains a selective international studio of students across the U.S. and overseas, including students in Europe, the U.K., Japan, and Singapore. Spink teaches violin, viola, and improvisation.

Spink received his Bachelor of Music and Masters of Music at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Carol Rodland and Masumi Per Rostad and was professor Rostad’s teaching assistant. In his postgraduate studies in New York, Spink was a student of Paul Neubauer.

Growing up in Colorado gave Spink a love of sunshine and the outdoors. Away from music, he enjoys practicing mixed martial arts, swimming, cycling, and hiking and has performed as a jazz saxophonist at jazz clubs in Denver.

Spink’s viola was made by Nicholas Nicolas Augustin Chappuy in 1768.