About the NCCP Players
Allen Blustine
Clarinet — General Director
Edna Glaessel Chair
Allen Blustine is a member of the New York Chamber Soloists, the Festival Winds and the award-winning new music ensemble Speculum Musicae (of which he is currently the President and Executive Director).
An active proponent of new music for the clarinet, he has premiered many solo works including Milton Babbitt’s "My Ends are My Beginnings," Donald Martino’s "Triple Concerto," Elliott Carter’s "GRA" (New York premiere) and most recently, Pulitzer prize winner Wayne Peterson’s "Peregrinations" for solo clarinet. Blustine has also performed with virtually every musical organization in New York, including the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet Orchestra, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
He played principal clarinet with the American Ballet Theater Orchestra and was principal clarinetist with the Paul Taylor Dance Company for over a decade, the Japan Philharmonic in the early 1970s, and the Musica Aeterna orchestra at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Blustine has appeared at the Bath (England) Festival, Warsaw Autumn Festival, has been in residence at the Yale Summer Music School and was a soloist at the New York Philharmonic’s Horizons Festival during the mid-1980s.
He is currently on the faculty of Columbia University and a founding member of the North Country Chamber Players.