Pittsburgh Symphony concertmaster joins Carnegie Mellon faculty

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Violinist David McCarroll, the concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO), has been named an artist lecturer in violin at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music. He is to join the faculty in the autumn 2024 semester, replacing Andrés Cárdenes, who will retire at the end of the current semester after 35 years of service.

’I am very much looking forward to working with a small class of violin students at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music, guiding them through these formative years of study and giving them the tools, both musical and technical, to achieve an ever-expanding range of expression,’ said McCarroll.

As an educator, he has taught violin at Mozarteum University Salzburg, and given masterclasses at San Francisco Conservatory, the Ravinia Steans Music Institute and the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. 

Prior to joining the PSO in 2022, McCarroll performed as a soloist with international orchestras including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich and Hong Kong Sinfonietta. He was also a member of the Vienna Piano Trio, performing and touring with them for seven years and winning the Echo Klassik and Opus Klassik awards for their recordings.

Born in Santa Rosa, CA, McCarroll began studying the violin with Helen Payne Sloat at the age of four. At eight, he attended the Crowden School of Music in Berkeley studying with Anne Crowden. When he was 13, he received an invitation to join an international group of 60 young music students at the Yehudi Menuhin School outside London where he studied for five years with Simon Fischer. McCarroll continued his studies with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston receiving a master’s degree, and with Antje Weithaas in the Konzertexamen (Artist Diploma) program at the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin.

McCarroll maintains an active interest in social concerns, including the needs of those impacted by the AIDS pandemic; he is currently working on projects of the Starcross Community to help AIDS orphans in Africa. He has performed in programmes encouraging world peace promoted by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and has given benefit concerts for Doctors Without Borders. With other members of his family, McCarroll has worked to get strings underserved young musicians in Cuba.

McCarroll plays a 1761 violin made by A&J Gagliano.

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