Violist Scott Nickrenz has Died, Aged 87

Nickrenz was a long-serving faculty member and director of chamber music at New England Conservatory

It has been announced that violist Scott Nickrenz has passed away at age 87 earlier this month. Originally starting on piano, then violin, in Buffalo, NY, Nickrenz eventually attended the Curtis Institute of Music on a scholarship. His teacher there Alexander Schneider, encouraged him to switch to the viola.

He became a fellow at Tanglewood — where he worked with musicians such as Elliott Carter, Leon Kirchner, Gunther Schuller, John Cage, and Aaron Copland.

His musical journey led him to New England Conservatory, where he served on faculty and as the director of chamber music from 1973 to 1979. From 1990 to 1998, he served as advisor to the Conservatory’s then-president Laurence Lesser.

As a chamber musician, Nickrenz performed with ensembles as the Vermeer, Lenox, and Claremont string quartets and championed Gunther Schuller’s Third Stream musical ethos with the Modern Jazz Quartet. He frequently appeared as a guest violist at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 1972 until 1989.

He directed chamber music programs at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and the Spoleto Festivals in South Carolina and Italy.

For more than 25 years, he was instrumental in the construction and programming of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Among those whose distinguished careers Nickrenz nurtured are violinist Joshua Bell, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and the Borromeo Quartet.

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.