Jacob Clewell  Viola & Violin

Commanding a "tone that is just…delicious" (W.C. Nyaho), American violist/violinist Jacob Clewell is proving himself a string player of rare range and versatility. Gold Medalist of the Vancouver International Music Competition and 2026 Emerging Artist of the American Viola Society, he has performed on the stages of Carnegie Hall and the Festival Pablo Casals in Prades, and shared the stage with Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós at Roy Thompson Hall — sustaining a wide-ranging career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator across North America and Europe.

Chamber music sits at the heart of Clewell's artistic life. He has performed alongside members of the Escher, Emerson, Endellion, and Penderecki String Quartets, the Gryphon Trio, the Manhattan Chamber Players, and pianists Pedja Muzijevic and Andrew Armstrong. His festival appearances span the Scotia Festival in Halifax, Green Lake Chamber Music Festival, Music Niagara, Lake District Summer Music in England, the Northern Lights Music Festival in Ajijic, Mexico, and the Festival Pablo Casals in Prades, France. He is also a member of the newly formed Zeza Trio with pianist Sasha Bult-Ito and saxophonist Nick May, which makes its debut in the 2026–27 season with engagements already confirmed in New York, New Jersey, and Boston.

As a soloist, Clewell's VIMC Gold Medal brought a winner's tour including his debut at Buntrock Hall at Symphony Center in Chicago, where he presented virtuoso showpieces by Henri Vieuxtemps. He has since appeared as concerto soloist with orchestras across the United States and Canada, among them the Juno Award–winning Sinfonia Toronto under conductor Nurhan Arman. He has served as principal violist of the Royal Conservatory Orchestra under maestros Gábor Takács-Nagy and Bramwell Tovey, and at the Marrowstone and Eastern Music Festivals under Gerard Schwarz, and appears occasionally as an extra musician with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

With pianist Sasha Bult-Ito, Clewell co-founded The Ezra Duo, whose performances have taken them to Koerner Hall in Toronto, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and a G7 Summit event at the Royal Ontario Museum. The duo released their debut album Mystic Journey in August 2024 on Akashic Classics, distributed worldwide by Universal Music Group. Clewell and Bult-Ito also serve as Co-Artistic Directors and Artist Faculty of the Emerald Coast Chamber Music Festival alongside violinist Nicholas Hatt and cellist Jordan Galvarino, teaching at the annual Chamber Music Institute for advanced conservatory students and performing in the ensemble-in-residence Velox Quartett.

Clewell's interests reach well beyond the classical concert hall. He has shared the stage with Latin jazz legend Jovino Santos Neto, premiered concert etudes drawn from music by Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson, and built a devoted following with Ezra through arrangements of film and video game music — their settings of Joe Hisaishi's Merry-Go-Round of Life and Keiichi Okabe's score to NieR: Automata among the most beloved. He served as guest principal violist with the Kingston Symphony for the world premiere of Grammy-winning composer Austin Wintory's Traveler symphony, drawn from Wintory's score to the video game Journey.

His doctoral research at the University of Toronto — completed as the Yo-Yo Ma Fellow under violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon and violist Masumi Per Rostad — confirmed the identity of the largely forgotten 19th-century French violist Casimir Ney and offered a technical and stylistic analysis of Ney's 24 Preludes for Solo Viola, making the case for their value as a guide to virtuosic Bel Canto viola playing. He also holds degrees from the Cornish College of the Arts, Stony Brook University, and The Glenn Gould School, where his mentors included Mara Gearman, Nicholas Cords, Lawrence Dutton, Steven Dann, and the Emerson String Quartet, and has pursued additional study with Roger Chase, Yuko Inoue, and Nobuko Imai.

He credits Itzhak Perlman, Boris Kroyt, Martha Argerich, Satoru Iwata, Hiyao Miyazaki, Ella Fitzgerald, My Chemical Romance, LiSA, and Sub-Radio as his greatest artistic inspirations. Away from musical activities, he can usually be found brewing specialty coffee, playing video and tabletop games, entertaining #AkalitheCat, and is probably wearing colorful shoes.

He performs on a restored c. 1680 Brothers Amati viola and a 1912 Daniel Tomashev violin.​

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