Violist of the award-winning Tesla Quartet, Edwin Kaplan continues to  forge a versatile identity as a recitalist, chamber musician, and  educator.  He has performed on concert series across the North America, Europe and Asia, including the Wigmore Hall in London, Festival Mozaic  in San Luis Obispo, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, the National  Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C., Tanglewood, Colorado College  Summer Music Festival, Kneisel Hall, and with the Burlington Ensemble of  Vermont.  He has collaborated with such esteemed artists as Paul Coletti, Lawrence Dutton, Alexander Fiterstein, Vadym Kholodenko,  Richard O’Neill, Mark Kaplan, and the American String Quartet. Recent engagements with the Tesla Quartet took him on a tour of Germany and Hungary where he performed at the Esterházy palace at which Haydn lived and worked.

Pushing his boundaries beyond the traditional repertoire, Edwin is  equally at home in new music, having participated in numerous premieres, including Andy Akiho’s LIgNEouS and Zosha Di Castri’s String Quartet  no. 1. In 2013 he performed a unique arrangement of Pink Floyd’s Dark  Side of the Moon for amplified string quartet and voice at Los Angeles’ Levitt Pavilion to critical acclaim. In addition, one of Edwin’s  favorite projects is his quartet’s annual call for scores for which he  combs through hundreds of recently composed string quartets submitted by  composers from all over the world.

Edwin is proud to serve his community as an advocate for music  education. He is on the faculty of the Thurnauer School of Music,  directed by Dorothy Roffman, where he instructs arts-focused teenagers  in violin and viola performance. Through his work at Thurnauer, as well  as with the Tesla Quartet, Edwin performs outreach at community primary  schools and has given master classes at universities in Georgia and  Missouri.

Edwin believes strongly in music education at all levels and has even  participated in adult amateur chamber music workshops at Kneisel Hall  in Blue Hill, ME, where he has brought in-depth coaching and musical  training to adults for whom music is a passion and hobby.

Edwin holds a Master of Music degree and an Artist Diploma from the  Yale University School of Music, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree  from the University of California at Los Angeles. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Manhattan School of  Music, where he studied with Lawrence Dutton.