Elisha Willinger

Born in Taiwan and raised in Florida, clarinetist Elisha Willinger leads a versatile career as a chamber musician, soloist, educator, and orchestral performer. He has made appearances as principal clarinet with the New Haven Symphony and the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida. He has also performed chamber music alongside members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and has been invited to perform with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. He was an associate member with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for 2018-19 season.

Mr. Willinger has won competitions including the 2017 Yale Chamber Music Society, 2012 Yamaha Young Performing Artists competition, and recently second prize in the 2019 International Clarinet Association’s orchestral competition. He has performed in the US, Europe, and Canada and was soloist with The Royal Conservatory Chamber Orchestra. In 2018 he made his debut at Carnegie Hall in Weill Recital Hall as part of the Yale in New York chamber series and was also a finalist performing Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto in the Yale Philharmonia’s Concerto Competition. He has spent summers at festivals including the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston (SC), National Repertory Orchestra, Aspen, Sarasota, Norfolk, Banff, American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, among others.

He is an avid educator having served as a Yale undergraduate clarinet instructor and Teaching Artist for Yale’s Music in the Schools Initiative in New Haven’s public schools. He is also currently the Graduate Student Instructor for the University of Michigan where he is pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree. As part of the Willinger Duo ensemble with his brother, pianist Lior Willinger, he is dedicated to new music and undergoing commissioning projects as they seek to expand the canon of clarinet and piano music by composers of underrepresented backgrounds.

He holds his Master of Music degree from Yale University where he studied with renowned clarinetist David Shifrin and an Artist Diploma from the Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School in Toronto.  His other major teachers include distinguished clarinetists Joaquin Valdepeñas, Principal Clarinet of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Ixi Chen,       Second Clarinet of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He earned his Bachelor of Music from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. At the University of Michigan, he is under the guidance of Daniel Gilbert and Chad Burrow.