David McCarroll was appointed concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2022, holding the Rachel Mellon Walton Concertmaster Chair. He has been described by Musik Heute as “a violinist of mature musicality and deep understanding of his repertoire whose playing is distinguished by clarity of form and line.”

Winner of the 2012 European Young Concert Artists Auditions, he made his concerto debut with the London Mozart Players in 2002 and has since appeared as soloist with many orchestras including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich (Simone Young, Grafenegg), Hong Kong Sinfonietta (Christoph Poppen), and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (Manfred Honeck). He regularly performs in major concert halls such as Konzerthaus Berlin, Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw, Wigmore Hall, Library of Congress, Kennedy Center, 92nd Street Y, and Carnegie Hall, while his performances are often broadcast on radio stations including WGBH Boston, WQXR New York, National Public Radio, Ö1, BR­-Klassik, and the BBC.

Also an active chamber musician, he served from 2015 to 2022 as the violinist of the renowned Vienna Piano Trio with whom he toured and recorded extensively. The Trio’s recording of the complete Brahms piano trios was awarded the 2017 Echo Klassik prize and in 2020 the Trio’s Beethoven recording won the Opus Klassik award. 

In addition, David has performed in many chamber ensembles with musicians including Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Miriam Fried, Pamela Frank, Anthony Marwood, Donald Weilerstein, Kim Kashkashian, Roger Tapping, Marcy Rosen, Peter Wiley, Charles Neidich, Jörg Widmann, and Radovan Vlatkovic, while he is a regular guest at festivals such as Marlboro, the Schubertiade, Heidelberger Frühling, Grafenegg, Lucerne Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Siete Lagos (Argentina), ChamberFest Cleveland, Portland Chamber Music Festival, and with the Israeli Chamber Project. Recent performances have included Stravinsky Violin Concerto at the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Pittsburgh premiere of Schumann Violin Concerto, touring with Musicians from Marlboro, and performances of György Kurtág’s “Kafka Fragments” for violin and soprano.

In demand as a teacher, David is on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music. He has previously taught at Salzburg's Mozarteum University, and has given masterclasses in violin and chamber music at Ravinia's Steans Institute, at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, and at the San Francisco Conservatory.

David was born in Santa Rosa, California in 1986 and began studying the violin with Helen Payne Sloat at the age of 4. At 8, he attended the Crowden School of Music in Berkeley studying with Anne Crowden. When David 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. David 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.

In addition to music, David 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.  David has performed in programs encouraging world peace promoted by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and has given benefit concerts for Doctors Without Borders. With other members of his family, David has worked to get strings to young music students in Cuba where such items are very difficult to obtain.

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

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