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
Born in Paris, Dr. Mélanie Clapiès is a multifaceted soloist and a passionate educator. Before joining the Butler string faculty as an Assistant Professor in Violin she taught at the Conservatories in Toulon and Bordeaux as well as at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. She regularly played with Paris Opera’s orchestra, the conductor-less ensemble Les Dissonances, and the period orchestra Le Cercle de l’Harmonie.
A dedicated chamber music player, in 2012 she founded the festival “En attendant…” in Burgundy, France, with cellist Yan Levionnois, which featured young musicians from France and the UK. She has participated in many other festivals in the United States, France, the UK, Russia, Malta, Italy, Spain, and Algeria, including Yellow Barn, Colmar, Musique en roue libre, the Deauville’s Festival de Pâques and Août Musical, la Roque d’Anthéron, the Salon Romantique of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, “Suona Francese”, Portogruaro, and the Fondation Monteleon. Her collaborators have included musicians such as Anthony Marwood, Roger Tapping, John Myerscough, Pavel Vernikov, Vladimir Mendelssohn, VictorJulien-Laferrière, Adam Laloum, and Guillaume Vincent.
Dr. Clapiès’s wide-ranging musical focuses include new and experimental music, as well as electronic music, which she explores through performing, improvising, and composing. As a part of her ongoing interest in researching and uplifting unusual repertoire, she recorded an album of duos for violin and cello with cellist Yan Levionnois (Pierrots Lunaires, Fondamenta/Sony, 2014). Since 2020, she has regularly collaborated and recorded with composer Joshua Penman on improvisation-based pieces including violin, piano, and electronics.
Dr. Clapiès studied at the Conservatoires Nationaux Supérieurs de Musique in both Lyon and Paris. After having moved to the United States, she received her M.M. and A.D. from the Yale School of Music where she studied with Syoko Aki. She completed a Doctoral degree at the Manhattan School of Music in the studio of Mark Steinberg. Named a Zonta Club laureate in 2001, she has also received the Broadus Erle Prize (2013), the Yale School of Music Alumni Association Prize (2014), the Philip Francis Nelson Prize from Yale University (2015), and the Saul Braverman Award (2021). At Yale, she was the winner of the Woolsey Concerto Competition in 2015 with Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto.
When she is not teaching or performing concerts, Dr. Clapiès splits her time between composing, painting, writing fiction, or hiking with her husband Matt Moldover.
“Rarely have I heard such a tender, vulnerable, intimate, and angelic performance of this great work.” […]
About the Berg Violin Concerto; Jonathan Cott, author of Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein and Conversations with Glenn Gould.
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.
Larry Shapiro came to the Jordan College of Fine Arts as a visiting professor in 1986 and joined the faculty as professor of violin and artist-in-residence the following year, in the midst of a long and distinguished career. After completing advanced violin study with Broadus Erle, Robert Semon, Noumi Fischer, Rafael Bronstein and Dorothy Delay, and chamber music studies with Lillian Fuchs, Aldo Parisot, David Wells, and William Kroll, Mr. Shapiro embarked upon a career that has included a great range of activities-from soloist to quartet player, from concertmaster to pedagogue.
As a quartet player Mr. Shapiro has performed as first violinist, second violinist, and occasionally violist with five quartets: The Fine Arts, Audubon, Berkshire, Evansville, and Delos (which he founded in 1965). He has served as concertmaster for many orchestras, including the El Paso Symphony, Evansville Philharmonic, New York Philharmonia, Green Bay Philharmonic, Grand Teton Festival, Akron Symphony, Orchestra of Illinois, and Orchestra Sinfonica de Mineria in Mexico City. He was concertmaster of the Columbus Symphony for four years.
Mr. Shapiro’s teaching background includes positions at Indiana University, the University of Delaware, the University of Evansville, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Virginia Tech and Akron University. He has appeared as soloist with orchestras throughout the country, conducted both university and youth orchestras, and has been violinist for both the Gabrielli and New Art Trios.
For several years, Mr. Shapiro toured as soloist with American Ballet Theatre, soloing more than 100 times in most of the major cities of the United States, as well as in Paris, Tokyo and London. For three years, Mr. Shapiro was first violinist with the White Oak Chamber Players, touring with Mikhail Baryshnikov. He performs on a violin made in 1772 by Nicholas Gagliano. For fifteen years, he was concertmaster of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and for 18 summers served as concertmaster for the Bear Valley Music Festival in California.
View Professor Shapiro’s Website
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.
William Grubb, DMA, Violoncello
Doctor of Musical Arts, The Juilliard School, 1981
Master of Music, The Juilliard School, 1976
Bachelor of Music, The Juilliard School, 1975
William Grubb, cellist, made his professional debut as soloist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra at the age of 17. He holds three degrees from The Juilliard School and was the fourth cellist in the school’s history to earn the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. While at Juilliard, he was winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition and presented his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall. His cello teachers have included his father, Cassel Grubb at DePauw University, Fritz Magg at Indiana University, Ronald Leonard at the Eastman School of Music, and Harvey Shapiro at The Juilliard School.
Dr. Grubb holds teaching positions at Butler University, Jordan College of the Arts, and the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music. Summer positions have included 35 summers at the Aspen Music Festival and School where he served on the board of trustees for nine years. In Beijing, he was on the faculty of the Great Wall International Music Academy. He has presented cello masterclasses at Aspen, the Hans Eisler School in Berlin, Peabody, the University of Michigan, Temple University, DePauw University, and the University of Colorado. He is a trustee and board member for the Indianapolis Suzuki Academy.
For twelve years he toured with the piano trio Aspen Soloists, presenting concerts in 49 of the 50 states as well as Europe and South America. In chamber music performances, he has shared the stage with artists including the American String Quartet, the Grammy-winning Angeles Quartet, violinist Isaac Stern, violist Michael Tree, and soprano Dawn Upshaw.
Dr. Grubb is a passionate teacher of cello and chamber music students, many of whom have gone on to pursue successful careers as orchestral musicians, chamber players, professors, and public school teachers. His website, University Cellist, devoted to serious young cellists who are about to pursue a career in classical music: www.universitycellist.wordpress.com
He is married to Laurie Carney, violinist in the American String Quartet and lives in Indianapolis and New York City. He plays cellos made by Antonio Gagliano, Naples, 1832, Giulio Cesare Gigli, Rome, 1772, and Than Kim, Chicago, 1995.