Strings Area Faculty

David Murray has an international reputation as a solo bassist and teacher. He is currently Professor of Bass and Director of the School of Music at Butler University in Indianapolis and Principal Bassist of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. He also plays as Principal Bassist with Sinfonia da Camera in Urbana, Illinois, and at the Bear Valley Music Festival in northern California. Before coming to Indianapolis, David was Instructor of Bass at West Texas A&M University and principal with the Amarillo Symphony. He has been a member of the Dallas Chamber Orchestra and also toured twice with the Irish Chamber Orchestra.

David’s first private teacher was bass virtuoso Gary Karr, with whom he studied in high-school and at the Hartt Music School, University of Hartford, in Connecticut. Summers were spent at Tanglewood and the Aspen Music Festival, where he worked with Stuart Sankey. At Aspen, he won the 1981 concerto competition. In Los Angeles in 1988 he won the International Society of Bassists (ISB) Solo Competition, the first prize being a solo debut at Carnegie Hall. David has made solo appearances, both in recital and with orchestra, and given clinics and masterclasses throughout the United States, his native Canada, and in South Korea, Brazil, Israel, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Holland. He has performed at several summer chamber music festivals including Scotia Festival, Killington, and Cape May. In June, 2001, David hosted the ISB convention at Butler University for 800 bassists from 27 countries and is currently a Past-President of the ISB. He has been published in the ISB journal, Double Bassist magazine, the Suzuki Association of America journal, and American String Teachers journal. He has recorded three solo CD’s (most recently in 2012), a duo CD with bassist Diana Gannett, is a founding member of the bass quartet Bad Boys of Bass with whom he released a CD in 2006, and he released a DVD of theater music in the spring of 2003.

Most recently he was awarded the ISB’s Special Recognition Award for Solo Performance.

As of June 1, 2018, David is the Director of the School of Music.

“…to hear David Murray play it, the string bass is a vastly and unjustly neglected instrument. Murray…became a prime spokesman for the instrument.”

                                                Denver Post

“…Murray is a top-notch player.”

                                                Indianapolis Star

Dr. Lisa Brooks is currently the Dean of the Jordan College of the Arts at Butler, in addition to Professor of Violin. She held previous faculty appointments at Baylor University, the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, Messiah College, and Dickinson College.

Dr. Brooks received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in violin performance in four years from West Virginia University, where she was a student of Donald Portnoy. While completing her doctorate in violin performance from the State University of NewYork at Stony Brook, she studied with Joyce Robbins, and as a member of the Stony Brook graduate piano trio, coached extensively with Julius Levine and Gilbert Kalish. Other important teachers have included Rafael Bronstein, Ariana Bronne, Stanley Ritchie, William DePasquale, and Carol Taleff.

As an orchestral musician, Dr. Brooks is currently principal second violinist of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and a frequent substitute musician with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra on both violin and viola. She was associate concertmaster of the Waco Symphony and performed with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Opera Company of Philadelphia, and Harrisburg and Reading Symphony Orchestras; she also has toured nationally with the Pennsylvania Ballet Company. She was an artist-fellow at the 1984 and1985 Bach Aria Festivals, and was a finalist in the 1981 A.S.T.A. National Solo Competition. Dr. Brooks was a founding member of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, a period-instrument ensemble.

Influenced by workshops and training sessions she has participated in at the Lincoln Center Institute for Aesthetic Education in New York City, Dr. Brooks has developed and taught a variety of academic courses at Butler. These include a non-traditional, listening-based approach to music appreciation for non-music majors, as well as a two-semester First Year Seminar sequence based on Classical Music and Society, which incorporates critical thinking, reading, writing, and speaking. In demand as a clinician for student musicians and teaching colleagues alike, her recent lectures and recitals have included presentations for the IMEA convention, the College Music Society’s Institute for Gender and Music, and a lecture-recital at a conference celebrating women in music held at Ohio University. In addition, Dr. Brooks presents the pre-concert lectures for the Ensemble Music Society.

In 2013, Dr. Brooks received the inaugural Faculty Award for Distinguished Service and Leadership from Butler University, and in 2001, she received a Creative Renewal Arts Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis.

Davis Brooks comes from a diverse musical background as soloist, pedagogue, orchestral musician, studio musician, concertmaster on Broadway, conductor, and chamber musician. His teaching experience has included faculty appointments at Baylor University, Wayne State University, the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, Bucknell University, DePauw University, University of Indianapolis, and Butler University, where he is Professor of Violin Emeritus. Dr. Brooks also held the 2015-2016 University of Alabama School of Music Endowed Chair in Music Composition.

Dr. Brooks has recorded five solo CDs. Two include music for violin plus electronics, and feature music by composers  Filipe Leitão, Patrick Long, Otto Leuning, James Aikman, James Mobberley, and Frank Felice, as well as a CD of the violin music of composer C.P. First. Lines from Poetry, released in March 2023, includes music by Ronald Caltabiano, Richard Einhorn, and Balee Pongklad. Early Musings features solo music written for him by ten Alabama composers. Other recordings include Reflection on a Hymn of Thanksgiving by Frank Felice, With Every Leaf a Miracle by Mark Schultz, Manunya by Frank Glover, and the Kodaly String Trio with violist Csaba Erdelyi and violinist Vasile Beluska. Dr. Brooks has concertized in China, Japan, Europe, and South America. 

Having served as Associate Concertmaster of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra for fifteen years, Dr. Brooks was also a member of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Lincoln Center for ten years. For nineteen years, he played in the New York Chamber Symphony, which produced over twenty critically acclaimed recordings during his tenure. Dr. Brooks has been concertmaster of the Chamber Orchestra of New England, the Harrisburg Symphony, and the Waco Symphony. He performs frequently with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and is active in the many commercial recording studios in the Indianapolis area. 

At Yale University, where he received a master’s degree in violin performance, Dr. Brooks studied with Broadus Erle and Syoko Aki. His doctorate, also in violin performance, is from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Other important teachers with whom he has studied include Joyce Robbins, George Neikrug, Russell Hatz, and Raymond Page; he has studied chamber music with Julius Levine, Josef Gingold, Aldo Parisot, and members of the Tokyo, Alard, and Guarneri Quartets. 

Chamber music is his first love. He has been a member of the Indianapolis Chamber Players, the Commonwealth and Landolfi Quartets, as well as the Meridian and Essex Piano Trios. In addition, Dr. Brooks’ special interests include both the performance of music by contemporary composers and performance on original instruments, particularly the music of the Baroque period. He is a founding member of both the Chicago 21st-Century Music Ensemble and the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. Recording four CDs with the progressive rock band The Psychedelic Ensemble has been a most pleasurable diversion, as has performing with the Indianapolis band Progressive Lenses. Oddly his favorite color has changed from blue to green in the last decade, and he enjoys a good cup of coffee.

Passionate and communicative, Max Geissler is a versatile cellist whose broad musical interests span multiple genres and disciplines. From performing in international chamber music series alongside distinguished artists, to premiering works by world-renowned composers with the new music ensemble Latitude 49, to historical performances on baroque cello with gut strings, Max’s artistic range is as diverse as it is dynamic. Currently, Max is the Assistant Professor of Cello at Butler University after previously serving on faculty at East Tennessee State University. Max spends his summers teaching and performing at ENCORE Chamber Music Institute and Kalmia Garden Music Arts Foundation, a non-profit organization Max founded and directs in Durham, CT, just celebrated its 12th season.

Maintaining an active presence as a performer, Max has been presented by prestigious international organizations such as La Jolla ChamberFest, Taipei Music Academy & Festival, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Geneva Music Festival. He has shared the stage with celebrated musicians such as Lynn Harrell, Mathieu Herzog, Clive Greensmith, Mihaela Martin, Frans Helmerson, Jon Kimura Parker, Cho-Liang Lin, and Martin Beaver. Eager to expand the scope of the solo cello repertoire, Max enjoys collaborating with and commissioning visionary contemporary composers such as Theo Chandler, Hilary Purrington, Erberk Eryılmaz, Chen Yihan, and Andrew Rindfleisch.

When serving as Co-Artistic Director of Latitude 49, Max premiered works by dozens of composers, bringing to life a diverse range of pieces from inspiring student compositions to collaborations with Juno and Pulitzer Prize-winning composers such as Joan Tower, Juri Seo, Christopher Cerrone, Mark Kilstofte, and Jared Miller. The ensemble continues to perform in major venues each season, including the Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago’s Ear Taxi Festival, Constellation Chicago, Princeton Sound Kitchen, Bowling Green State University’s New Music Festival, and New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s The Cube. With Latitude 49, Max has recorded and released five albums, including publications with New Amsterdam Records. The ensemble’s annual summer festival, Sound Atlas Sound Festival, presented at Contemporary Calgary, has been praised as “one of Calgary’s most exciting festivals to look out for.”

Max is deeply committed to cultivating a studio of young cellists who are engaged collaborators in their communities. In addition to his studio teaching at ETSU, Max regularly teaches at various academies and festivals such as ENCORE Chamber Music Institute’s Summer Academy and the Tennessee Cello Workshop, alongside distinguished colleagues from Northwestern, Rice, Indiana, McGill University, Oberlin, and San Francisco Conservatory. Max is also in high demand for teaching and performing residencies at universities including Princeton University, Vanderbilt University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Tennessee, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Colorado State University, Baylor University, and SUNY-Fredonia. Max’s students have been accepted into top-tier festivals and degree programs, and have earned prestigious awards in national and international competitions, including the From The Top audition, the YoungArts Competition, the Stulberg International String Competition, and the Grand Prize Virtuoso Competition (Bonn, Germany).

In 2024, Max received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. During his Master’s and Doctoral studies at Rice, he served as Desmond Hoebig’s teaching assistant and taught the university’s non-major cello studio. Max earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan under the mentorship of Richard Aaron and also spent a year in the Study Abroad program, taking lessons with Michel Strauss from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.

Composer, conductor, violinist, and violist Richard Auldon Clark is Artistic Director and Conductor of the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Manhattan Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and the Finger Lakes Chamber Music Festival. A strong proponent of American music, Mr. Clark has performed and/or recorded hundreds of world premiers, and his work has received extraordinary praise in the New York Times, Fanfare, American Record Guide, Washington Post, and dozens of others. Mr. Clark has recorded the music of David Amram, Henry Cowell, Seymour Barab, Lukas Foss, Alan Hovhaness, Otto Leuning, Osvaldo Lacerda, Dave Soldier, Alec Wilder, and many more. An active studio musician as well, Mr. Clark has performed and recorded for Broadway, television, commercial, and film music, including several films for Philip Glass. Mr. Clark’s compositions have been praised in the New York Times and broadcast on NPR stations around the country. With more than twenty chamber works to his credit, Mr. Clark has premiered six new compositions in the past three years at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, and in September 2016, his opera Happy Birthday, Wanda June with a Libretto by Kurt Vonnegut was premiered by Indianapolis Opera. A frequent collaborator, Mr. Clark works with dancers, choreographers, and visual artists in the creation of new works. Currently, Mr. Clark is Professor of Music at Butler University where conducts the Butler Symphony Orchestra and Butler Ballet.