Torin Bakke was the winner of the 2014 Crain-Maling Foundation Chicago Symphony Orchestra Youth Auditions.
On this Saturday’s live broadcast, we feature 17 year old clarinetist Torin Bakke, winner of the 2014 Crain-Maling Foundation Chicago Symphony Orchestra Youth Auditions.
Torin began studying the clarinet at the age of 10, because he was too small to play the bassoon. He quickly fell in love with the instrument, which he currently studies with Steven Cohen, clarinet professor at Northwestern University, and he formerly studied with Dileep Gangolli.
In May 2014, Torin had the opportunity to solo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a part of their Youth Concert series. He played the Britten/Matthews “Movements for a Clarinet Concerto,” a recently published completion of Benjamin Britten’s unfinished clarinet concerto originally intended for Benny Goodman.
Torin was co-principal of the Carnegie Hall Weill Institute’s National Youth Orchestra of the United States for the 2014 season, where he and the other clarinets worked with Stephen Williamson, principal of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Then they embarked upon an eight-city U.S. tour including performances at Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Grant Park Music Festival, Walt Disney Hall and other music festivals across the country.
Twice awarded honorable mention by the prestigious YoungArts Foundation, Torin has been recognized in the Crain Mahling Foundation Chicago Symphony Orchestra Youth Auditions, the Walgreens Concerto Competition, the Discover Chamber Music Competition, the Depaul Concerto Festival, the MTNA competition, the International Clarinet Association’s High School Solo Competition and the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra’s Concerto Competition.
He has performed with the CSO, the Oistrakh Symphony Orchestra, the Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra, the North Suburban Symphony and the Knox-Galesburg Symphony, and he will be appearing later this spring with the Bismarck Mandan Symphony Orchestra. Torin has performed with the Chicago Youth in Music Festival, at Music in the Loft’s Young Artists Concert Series, in the Pilgrim Chamber Players’ Stars of Tomorrow Concert, and at the Chicago Cultural Center.
In addition to playing the clarinet, he enjoys playing piano, which he studies with Barbara Rubenstein, watching theater, opera, travel, reading, watching documentaries, shopping and writing in his blog, “10,000 Hours.” (http://10kforclarinet.blogspot.com/)