David Halen is living a dream that began when he first saw the St. Louis Symphony perform in his home town of Warrensburg, Missouri. His musical influences began at home: his father, Walter Halen, was also his violin professor at Central Missouri State University,  Mr. Halen began playing the violin at age six, graduated from high school at sixteen and two years later, at the age of eighteen, he won the Music Teachers National Association Competition and was granted a Fulbright scholarship for study in Germany with Wolfgang Marschner at the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik; the youngest-ever recipient of this award. Mr. Halen’s career has included title positions with the Houston Symphony under Christoph Eschenbach, and he has served as concertmaster in St. Louis under Leonard Slatkin, the late Hans Vonk, and currently David Robertson. He has appeared extensively as soloist with the St. Louis Symphony and the Houston, San Francisco, and West German Radio (Cologne) symphonies. In addition to serving on the faculty and as concertmaster (under David Zinman) at the Aspen Music Festival, he is a visiting artist at Yale University, artistic director of the Innsbrook Institute, and a Distinguished Artist of the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University. Mr. Halen plays a 1753 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin, made in Milan, Italy.

Back to Festival Home