As an international soloist and symphony, chamber and opera musician, American clarinetist Christopher Davis has been playing the clarinet professionally for more than 30 years. He has performed as the principal/solo clarinetist of the Las Vegas Philharmonic, Salt Lake Symphony, Utah Philharmonia, Utah Musical Theatre, Nevada Ballet Theatre, Nevada Opera Theatre, and the College Band Directors National Association Intercollegiate Band (of the USA and Canada), among others, and is also a respected music educator and arranger.
As a teenager, Davis performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto as featured soloist in a nationally televised youth orchestra showcase concert for United States President George H.W. Bush. He has since played solo, chamber music and symphony concerts coast-to-coast in the USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, and Mexico, having collaborated and performed with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Joshua Bell, Rachel Barton, Zuill Bailey, Andre Watts, Leslie Howard, Frederick Fennell, Col. John Bourgeois, Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, Mandy Patinkin, Linda Eder, and Anne Murray. He has premiered works of composers Eric Ewazen, Daron Hagen, and Jiaming Chen.
Davis has performed on the soundtracks of 13 films. He is the past winner of numerous solo competitions and is a frequent guest soloist with orchestras and bands. He earned degrees in clarinet performance and psychology on full orchestral scholarships from the University of Utah and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas while serving as the principal/solo clarinetist of each institution's premier concert ensembles. His principal clarinet teachers were Kathy Pope (Salt Lake City), Raphael Sanders (New York), and Felix Viscuglia (Boston). Davis studied in Los Angeles intensively with Mitchell Lurie and Kalman Bloch and has performed for the master classes of Béla Kovács, Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, David Shifrin, Jon Manasse, Mitchell Lurie, Kalman Bloch, Christie Lundquist, and Michèle Gingras.
Davis has been teaching clarinet since 1987 and had one of the most prominent clarinet studios in the western USA for two decades. His students have been first-prize winners and finalists at state-level, national, and international competitions. For seven years, he was the director of The Davis Honors Clarinet Sinfonia (the acclaimed performing ensemble of his top students in the USA) and is now director of its Mexican counterpart, La Camerata de Clarinetes de México. Davis has been a popular adjudicator of solo and chamber music competitions in California, Nevada, and Utah since 1993. He was the clarinet teaching specialist/clinician for the Clark County School District for eight years, and for three years he served as the Nevada State Chair of the International Clarinet Association.
Originally from Los Angeles, California, Davis enjoys traveling, living and working abroad, having made Kobe, Japan and Québec, Canada home at different points in his career. Having emigrated from the USA in 2009, he is now a permanent resident of Mexico. Davis is cofounder and Co-Executive Director of Arquetopia, an international nonprofit foundation for visual arts and music based in Puebla and Oaxaca, Mexico and Cusco, Peru.
