Short bio:
Diego Vásquez is an interdisciplinary musician who loves to play the clarinet and twerk. His debut EP, “Dr Diego,” was released last year from the seeds of classic deep house, disco, chiptunes and baroque organ music. Diego is Principal Clarinet of the Berkshire Opera Festival, a 2020 Connecticut Artist Fellow, and Assistant Professor of Music at Ithaca College. He has worked for the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland as both a clarinetist and dancer.
Long bio:
A native of Washington DC, Diego Vásquez is an interdisciplinary musician. His debut clarinet EP "DR DIEGO" burst into bloom this year from the seeds of classic deep house, disco, chiptunes, and baroque organ music. Vásquez is Principal Clarinet of the Berkshire Opera Festival, a 2020 Connecticut Artist Fellow, and Assistant Professor of Music at Ithaca College, NY. He recently returned from Switzerland, where he worked for the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra and the Lucerne Theater in "STYX Tour: A Rendezvous with the Dead." For the 2017-2018 season Vásquez was a dancer/mime soloist in Karlheinz Stockhausen's INORI, produced by the Lucerne Festival and the Stockhausen Foundation in Germany, with performances at the Luzern KKL and the Berlin Philharmonie under the baton of Péter Eötvös. In 2019 Vásquez performed Stockhausen’s KLANG in Montreal, and UVERSA [basset-horn and electronics] at Zelyonka Space Up in Kiev, Ukraine’s largest modern dance festival. He has performed with musicians Matthias Pintscher, Alan Gilbert and Anne-Sophie Mutter.
Diego completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts at The Hartt School with a dissertation entitled “The Clarinet Writing in Wagner’s Parsifal as Synthesis of the Wagner/Nietzsche Relationship," his Masters of Music from Mannes College The New School and his Bachelors of Music from Ithaca College. He has studied music history with Ira Braus and clarinet with Richard Faria, Ayako Oshima and Charles Neidich.
In addition, Diego has ventured into other aspects of the arts, having worked as Communications Manager for the contemporary arts organization Real Art Ways in Connecticut and curator of a concert series at the West End Farmers' Market in Hartford.
Photograph: Der Kleine Harlekin