JAVS Summer 2025

In his final days, the outpouring of love from colleagues and former students spoke volumes. Yo-Yo Ma played Bach at his bedside. Joshua Bell called from Rome. Jean Yves Thibaudet played Liszt. Their music, like their lives, bore Scott’s indelible influence. Through every student he taught, concert he shaped, and hall he filled with music, Scott Nickrenz’s spirit continues to resonate. His was a life lived in harmony with art, and in service to its future. We are all the richer for his having been among us.

both Charleston and Spoleto, Italy, the New World Symphony, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Scott shaped generations of musicians and audiences alike. He also taught and advised at the New England Conservatory, where he served on the faculty and as director of chamber music, returning in the 1990s at the invitation of President Laurence Lesser to revitalize chamber music education at the institution. Scott’s unique ability to identify and elevate rising artists—“chops and a good sense of humor,” he said— helped launch the careers of many, including Joshua Bell, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and the Borromeo String Quartet. His programming was not only artistically daring but human-centered, and always crafted with the musician and listener in mind. This ethos culminated in the design of Calderwood Hall at the Gardner Museum: an intimate, cube-shaped venue where music would envelop both player and listener in a shared, sonic embrace. “It’s like my whole life, my whole career was aiming for the ‘sonic cube,’” he once reflected. “I’m so proud of it.” He was, above all, a mentor—generous with his time, devoted to younger artists, and unwavering in his belief that music should inspire, uplift, and connect. Whether encouraging a student, curating a concert, or simply listening, Scott’s presence was both reassuring and galvanizing. As Nicholas Kitchen of the Borromeo Quartet once said, “There is no more meaningful mentor to us than Scott Nickrenz.” Lunch break, the Dock Street Theater, Charleston, South Carolina, June 1981. Left to right: Philip Setzer, Eugene Drucker, Kenneth Cooper, Scott Nickrenz, Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Photo by David Finckel.

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 41, Summer 2025 Online Issue