Samuel Magill

Cellist Samuel Magill has been called “…a world-class artist…” by Fanfare Magazine and his first Naxos CD, of Vernon Duke’s 1945 Cello Concerto, was hailed as “flat-out magnificent” by American Record Guide. After a 1990 concert, Lorin Maazel hailed Magill’s playing as “…well-nigh perfect”. In 2014 The Strad magazine raved about Magill’s “sumptuous tone” in his 2014 recital at New York’s Bargemusic series, in which he and Beth Levin played the rarely heard Czerny arrangement of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Violin Sonata. This led to their 2016 Navona CD which includes the Kreutzer, the Solo Cello Sonata by Artur Schnabel, and the Ballade by Emanuel Moór. Writing in Classics Today, Jed Distler said “…Magill’s superb technique, range of color, and intelligent pacing make a compelling case (for the Schnabel)”. Among Magill’s 20 CDs, his and his colleagues’ (Elmira Darvarova, Craig and Mary Ann Mumm, and Scott Dunn) three volume survey of the complete chamber music of Franco Alfano, for Naxos, is a stand-out.

Mr Magill has appeared as a soloist throughout Japan and the U.S., including performances of both the Schumann Concerto and the Brahms Double Concerto in Tokyo’s famed Suntory Hall, and the Brahms and the Haydn D Major Concerto in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. During nine tours of Japan, Magill performed, besides the above works, the concerti of Dohnanyi, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and the Triple Concerto of Beethoven. He has partnered with the pianists Oxana Yablonskaya, Pascal Rogé, and the late Grant Johannesen, and presented annual recitals from 1994 until 2019 at Lincoln Center’s New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. He is a co-founder, with flutist Lucian Rinando and harpist Grace Ludtke, of the flute, cello, and harp trio Sono Auros. They made their New York debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall to critical acclaim, with Strings magazine declaring them “masters of their instruments”. Magill is also a founding member of the New York Piano Quartet (Elmira Darvarova, violin; Ronald Carbone, viola; and Linda Hall, piano). Festivals Mr. Magill has participated in include the Tanglewood, Aspen, Tahoe, Castleton, and the Festival Albert Roussel in France and Belgium, for which he and pianist Diane Andersen played recitals in Bruges and Paris.

A pupil of the late Zara Nelsova, Mr. Magill also studied with Laurence Lesser at the Peabody Institute and with Shirley Trepel at Rice University. He is the former Associate Principal Cello with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, former member of the Houston Symphony, and a former member of the Pittsburgh Symphony. In his 43 years as a member of these orchestras, Magill worked with conductors Muti, Levine, Rattle, Bernstein, Ozawa, Maazel, Thielemann, Rozhdestvensky, Leinsdorf, Rudolf, Barenboim, Luisi, and Santi, among many others.

Mr. Magill is originally from Chapel Hill, NC and attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts for high school. There he was a student of the late Irving Klein, who was a pupil of Emanuel Feuermann, as were Ms. Trepel and Ms. Nelsova.