Born in Paris, Dr. Mélanie Clapiès is a multifaceted soloist and a dedicated chamber music player who enjoys an international career. She has been invited to festivals in the United States, France, the UK, Russia, Malta, Italy, Spain, and Algeria, including Yellow Barn, Colmar, Musique en roue libre, the Deauville’s Festival de Pâques and Août Musical, la Roque d’Anthéron, the Salon Romantique of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, ‘Suona Francese’, Portogruaro, and the Fondation Monteleon. Her collaborators include Anthony Marwood, Roger Tapping, John Myerscough, Pavel Vernikov, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Victor Julien-Laferrière, Adam Laloum, Guillaume Vincent, and Patrick Hemmerlé.
Mélanie’s wide ranging musical focuses include new and experimental music, as well as electronic music, which she explores through performing, improvising, and composing. As a part of her ongoing interest in researching and uplifting unusual repertoire, she recorded an album of duos for violin and cello with cellist Yan Levionnois (Pierrots Lunaires, Fondamenta/Sony, 2014).
Mélanie studied at the Conservatoires Nationaux Supérieurs de Musique in both Lyon and Paris. After having moved to the United States, she received her M.M. and A.D. from the Yale School of Music and completed a Doctoral degree at the Manhattan School of Music in the studio of Mark Steinberg. Named a Zonta Club laureate in 2001, she has also received the Broadus Erle Prize (2013), the Yale School of Music Alumni Association Prize (2014), the Philip Francis Nelson Prize from Yale University (2015), and the Saul Braverman Award (2021). At Yale, she was the winner of the Woolsey Concerto Competition in 2015 with Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto. She is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda.
A dedicated educator, Mélanie Clapiès joined Butler University as a Violin faculty in 2022. She previously taught at the Conservatories in Toulon and Bordeaux as well as at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris.