Performances + Events
The New England Conservatory community mourns the passing of Scott Nickrenz, a deeply inspiring figure in the world of music. Nickrenz, a violist who served on the NEC faculty and was director of chamber music from 1973 to 1979, and from 1990 to 1998 served as advisor to the Conservatory’s then-president Laurence Lesser, died on March 17. He was 87.
An intrepid and sought-after chamber musician, Nickrenz performed with such iconic ensembles as the Vermeer, Lenox, and Claremont string quartets, and championed Gunther Schuller’s Third Stream musical ethos alongside the Modern Jazz Quartet. In addition to his work at NEC, Nickrenz directed chamber music programs at the Spoleto Festivals in South Carolina and Italy, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and, for more than a quarter century, at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where he curated a programmatically diverse series and was instrumental in the design and construction of a celebrated venue.
Nicholas Kitchen, a violinist in the Borromeo String Quartet, NEC’s longtime faculty ensemble in residence, first met Nickrenz when the quartet entered the Conservatory’s artist diploma program, which coincided with Nickrenz’s return to NEC at the urging of then president and current faculty member Laurence Lesser, who, Kitchen said, “wanted Scott Nickrenz to play an important role in developing the quality and the creativity of chamber music at NEC.”
Indeed, in 1990, Lesser said, “Scott Nickrenz is a wonderful artist of high ideals and a sure knowledge of all aspects of the music profession. I am especially gratified that he is returning to NEC, where we first worked together 15 years ago.”
“He had an incredible professional experience himself,” Kitchen said of Nickrenz’s career as a performer. “He was one of those people who could not only do it himself but also had such a clear and sure insight into which young artists would really contribute something great to music.”
Among those whose distinguished careers Nickrenz nurtured are violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
The Borromeo Quartet, Kitchen said, entered the Young Concert Artists International Auditions
in 1991 with Nickrenz’s encouragement, and won the competition, a seminal moment in the young quartet’s career. For decades, the quartet had a longstanding relationship with the Gardner Museum.
“There is no more meaningful mentor to us than Scott Nickrenz,” Kitchen said.
Nickrenz is survived by his wife, flutist Paula Robison, who occupies a teaching chair at NEC endowed in 2005 by Charles “Chuck” and Donna Hieken, with matching funds from the Nicholas Family Challenge, daughters Erika Nickrenz and Elizabeth Nickrenz Fein, grandson Zachary Herman, and sister Nola Allen. Read an obituary published by WBUR.
