"He has musical ideas...he also has fleet fingers, ample breath control and a sort of body english that goes along with his phrasing attractively." The New York Times

"...the music was gloriously alive, with glowing crescendos and hauntingly beautiful soft passages..." The Washington Post

"Schocker's extraordinary breath control, subtle shadings of color and dynamics and witty timing at the cadenzas were highlights of his performance."
Telegram & Gazette

News: Music publisher Theodore Presser Company celebrates the 50th birthday of flutist/composer Gary Schocker with a contest. Click here for more info.

A busy touring performer, flutist Gary Schocker is an unusually versatile musician whose many compositions have attracted a world-wide audience and several awards. His poetic and virtuosic flute playing has brought him great critical acclaim, and his compositions span the forms from solo material to the Broadway musical. Performances feature Gary's work as a flute recitalist and concerto soloist, as a member of a busy performance duo with guitarist Jason Vieaux and as pianist as well. On tour, he programs from the great wealth of flute repertoire, offering both standard works and new works, including his own concertos with orchestra (Green Places, Airborne, and Regrets and Resolutions). In the press, critics say things like "What sets his performance apart from others is the directness of the playing, the lack of artifice and the presence of musical urgency. Schocker uses the flute to communicate his own enthusiasm and considerable insights" (hails The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Gary, who opened the Dallas Symphony's 100th anniversary season performing John Corigliano's Pied Piper Fantasy, has performed widely as a concerto soloist. His engagements have included performances with, among others, the New York Philharmonic (under Michael Tilson Thomas), the Philadelphia Orchestra, the West German Sinfonia and an extended tour with I Solisti Italiani. In recital, he has been heard in New York, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Washington and many other communities from coast to coast. Gary has collaborated with many artists on stage, including Pinchas Zuckerman, Emanual Ax, Jessye Norman, James Galway and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

A composer of chamber music as well, Gary Schocker's Clarinet Sonata and Two Clarinet Sonata have won successive competitions held by the International Clarinet Association. In the summer of 2000, Gary won The National Flute Association's Competition for Newly Published Works. Gary's Bach Partita Ghost, and Obbligato to the Unaccompanied Partita in A Minor was this year's winner. Several years ago, Gary won for his Three Dances For Two Flutes, which has been taken on a life of it's own, having been performed widely by many flutists, including such James Galway. Schocker's other great love is the musical theater, for which he has written two musicals. One of those, Far From The Madding Crowd, has been selected as one of the works to be presented as a Next Link Production in the first New York Musical Theatre Festival, slated for September-October, 2004. The work has also been produced by the National Alliance for Music Theatre at their annual festival. This period peice, based on Thomas Hardy's novel has a cast of 14 and has got a happy ending (the only Hardy story that does). The show received it's first full production in Christchurch, New Zealand at the National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art.

Excerpts from Far From The Madding Crowd and The Awakening have been recorded on Original Cast Recordings with an all-Star broadway cast and is now in it's second pressing. (Make link to GS's CD order form.) All of his compositions are published by Theodore Presser.

Among the artists who have played his compositions, James Galway gave the American premiere of Green Places with the New Jersey Symphony. Gary's earlier association with that orchestra came when he replaced, for several concerts, an ailing Jean-Pierre Rampal, on a mere 24 hour notice. Winner of the 1985 Young Concert Artists Auditions, Gary is also First Prize winner of the National Flute Association, the New York Flute Club and the East-West Artists Competitions. Internationally, he has toured and taught in Colombia, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Germany, France and Italy. Gary Schocker's recordings include the Mozart Flute Quartets with The Chester String Quartet on the Chesky Records label, which has also released a Gary Schocker solo CD of Bach, Handel and Telemann. His latest recording is a set of Gary Schocker compositions on the JonathanDigital label (http://www.Jonathandigital.com).

To purchase a CD visit: http://www.Jonathandigital.com