April 21: Spring Spectacular

A native of Longview, Washington, Clark Potter is Professor of Viola at the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he is also on the conducting faculty. He is the director of NEBratsche (the UNL viola ensemble) and an active performer as a solo recitalist and chamber musician. Mr. Potter has conducted the Lincoln Youth Symphony since 2007 and has conducted that ensemble in Rome, Prague, Budapest, Dresden, Leipzig, Vienna, Dublin, and Belfast. He is also a member of several chamber ensembles, including the Trans-Nebraska Players and the newly formed UNL faculty ensemble, Una Corda. After 26 years, Mr. Potter recently retired as principal viola of the Lincoln Symphony.

In 2019, Potter traveled three times to Europe. In March, he conducted the Lincoln Youth Symphony in Rome. In April, he was invited to conduct a youth orchestra in Budapest comprised of student musicians from International Christian Schools from many of the major cities of Europe, Istanbul, and Moscow. Then in October, Mr. Potter was invited to give a lecture regarding “The Shakespeare Project” and perform with the Trans-Nebraska Players, at the Musical Intersections in Practice conference held at Churchill College, Cambridge University in Cambridge, England. That performance included works that Potter arranged of orchestral pieces inspired by Shakespeare’s plays and readings from Shakespeare by a local actor. In 2023, Mr. Potter was a Mayor’s Arts honoree and recipient of the Gladys Lux Education Award for his work with the Youth Symphony. In 2013, Mr. Potter received the “Outstanding Faculty in Outreach, Engagement and Service” award from the College of Fine and Performing Arts at UNL, and he was awarded the “Golden Baton Award” for his dedication and work as a musician and citizen in Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra.

During the summers, Mr. Potter is on the Omaha Conservatory of Music’s SoundWaves faculty and performs in the Columbia River Chamber Music Festival. His research interests include his edition of the Bach cello suites for viola, pioneering work with string players’ breathing habits, and the concert stage music of Hollywood film composer Ernest Gold, whose 1946 viola sonata received its premiere in 2017 in Lincoln with Mr. Potter on viola with Mark Clinton, pianist.

Clark would rather be at home than anywhere else in the world, however, enjoying time with his family, including wife, Jan; daughter Shannon and her whippets Apollo and Gemini; and son Samuel and his wife Alexandria, the first grandchild Hudson and their pug Stinky Pete. He is a big baseball and Seattle Mariners fan, and his favorite hobby is running and racing on roads and trails year-round.