clarinet
Raised in California, clarinetist Steven Klimowski went to New York City after high school to study with the famed clarinet teacher Leon Russianoff. He spent seven years with Russianoff while attending the Manhattan School of Music and the State University of New York at Purchase. Klimowski played for three years with the State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra in Toluca, Mexico. He moved to Vermont in 1980 and started teaching the clarinet and saxophone at the University of Vermont. He also teaches clarinet and classical saxophone at St. Michael's College and has his own private studio.
Currently, he concertizes in a solo and chamber music capacity throughout Vermont and northern New England. Klimowski plays with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and Raising Cane the woodwind trio of the VSO where he plays for Vermont's school children. He performs regularly with the Vermont Mozart Festival and the Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival and has been recorded on Albany Records and on Trey Anastasio's recent solo CD. He is very active in the new music scene and has premiered several works for solo clarinet. In 1987 he founded the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble of which he the artistic director. The VCME continues to commission and perform new music now in its seventeenth season. In 1987 and again in 1990 Mr. Klimowski was honored with an individual artist's fellowship from the Vermont Arts Council and in 2003 received it's Citation of Merit.