Michael Drapkin has enjoyed a distinguished career as a symphony orchestra clarinetist, composer, arranger, publisher, music retailer, educator, clinician and adjudicator. As a clarinetist, he has held prominent positions such as Associate Principal and Bass Clarinet with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, Principal Clarinet with the New York City Opera Touring Company and Principal Clarinet at the Lake George Opera Festival (now Opera Saratoga). Drapkin has also performed a host of prestigious orchestras including the New Jersey Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, the Portland Symphony, the Long Island Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, and the New York City Ballet orchestra, and collaborations with esteemed conductors like Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Michael Tilson Thomas, Neville Marriner, Leonard Slatkin, Lucas Foss, Christopher Keene, Klaus Tennstedt, Frederick Fennell, among others. He spent summers at Aspen and at Tanglewood as a Berkshire Music Center fellow, and served as Solo Clarinetist and Executive Director of Music Amici, Rockland County, NY’s oldest professional chamber music group and performed with them in Carnegie Hall.
Upon relocating to Sarasota, Florida in mid-2020, Drapkin was recruited by the Venice Symphony. He has since performed with the Chamber Orchestra of Sarasota, the Southwest Florida Symphony in Ft. Myers, and his klezmer band Yiddish Cowboys, which headlined the IsraelFest in Ft. Myers. He has also collaborated with EnsembleNewSRQ, Florida’s premiere contemporary chamber ensemble, and is a member of the Sarasota Clarinet Trio and the Venice Symphony Woodwind Trio.
Mr. Drapkin is internationally renowned in the clarinet world for his authorship of the Symphonic Repertoire for the Bass Clarinet series—excerpt books Volumes One, Two and Three, and his transposed parts books Volumes Four and Five, which were tested in 53 professional orchestras in the US ranging from the New York Philharmonic to the San Francisco Symphony, and internationally from La Scala to Reykjavík. These books have become standard literature for bass clarinetists globally and are sold at his eCommerce website, bassclarinet.net. He also authored two books for the clarinet: “How to Work on Clarinet Reeds,” and “Drapkin’s Book of Clarinet Calisthenics,” and has published a series of the six major public-domain clarinet concerti transcribed for clarinet and string quartet. He also authored two series of trios including one with 53 arrangements from opera, orchestra, band as well as “Drapkin’s Trios for the December Holidays.”
Drapkin founded and presented the Brevard Conference on Music Entrepreneurship (BCOME) for two summers at the Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina, for which he was awarded $100,000 in grants from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, for which he was one of their first music grantees ever. His work with BCOME, earned him a nomination for Best Non-Profit CEO for The Ten Awards – the “Academy Awards of New York Business.”
An influential speaker, Drapkin has delivered keynote speeches, lectures and master classes across the U.S. including Eastman, Juilliard, Northwestern and the California Institute for the Arts. He has also served onthe Board of Directors of the Brooklyn Phil, and has written a forthcoming book about their innovative community-based model, the “Brooklyn Model.”
Drapkin developed his own klezmer band Yiddish Cowboys, and featured them in the Classical Crossover showcase he ran for South by Southwest, highlighting classically trained bands who crossed into mainstream music. Yiddish Cowboys is now recognized as the only professional klezmer band on the Florida Gulf Coast.
A scholarly member of the College Music Society, Drapkin has been a three-time chair of their Careers Outside the Academy Committee, and has contributed significantly to their conferences and seminars. He also served as a music judge and chief judge at high school marching band contests across the U.S. for 20 years. Mr. Drapkin is a Selmer Artist. He performs on a beautiful Selmer-Paris Model 67B jet black bass clarinet.
A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where he studied under Stanley Hasty and toured Japan with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, Drapkin has continued to push the boundaries of classical music. His recent transcriptions of classical masterpieces for chamber orchestras have been performed on three continents, and his recordings have been submitted for Grammy consideration. Drapkin’s ongoing projects include orchestrating and premiering major works like Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet for chamber orchestra, further cementing his role as a transformative figure in the classical music landscape. His efforts are highlighted through his initiative, Restructuring Classical Music, which seeks to adapt the classical music industry to contemporary challenges.
Essays on Austin
Essays on Classical Music
• UT Austin Keynote Speech 2-3-2001: Putting your Degree to Work
• It’s a Pitch(published by Symposium and Polyphonic.org
• The Commoditization of Orchestra Musicians(published by Polyphonic.org)
• An Indexed Financial Model for Symphony Orchestras (published by Polyphonic.org)
• The Rise of the Industrial Clarinetist(published by The Clarinet and reposted by Polyphonic.org)
• Musicians as Programmers(published by Electronic Musician Magazine)