MFA (California Institute of the Arts), MM (Indiana University), BM (Western Washington University)

A native of Longview, Washington, Clark Potter is Professor of Viola at the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, where he is also on the conducting faculty. He is the director of NEBratsche (the UNL viola ensemble), and he is an active performer as a solo recitalist and chamber musician. Mr. Potter has been the Music Director of the Lincoln Youth Symphony since 2007 and has conducted that ensemble in Rome, Prague, Budapest, Dresden, Leipzig, Vienna, Dublin and Belfast. He is also a member of three chamber ensembles: the Nebraska Chamber Players, the Trans-Nebraska Players, and the newly formed UNL faculty ensemble, Una Corda. After 26 years, Mr. Potter recently retired as principal viola of the Lincoln Symphony. He is in demand as an adjudicator and clinician at schools in Nebraska and around the region. He has conducted All-State Middle School Orchestras in Iowa, Oregon, Nebraska and Alabama, and he has appeared more than two dozen times as a guest conductor of high school honors orchestras in Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Nevada and Nebraska.

Mr. Potter served on the faculty of the Csehy Summer School of Music from 1988-1996, and he returned in 2014 and 2015 to be the master teacher for ChamberFest week at Csehy. During the summers, he teaches at the Omaha Conservatory of Music’s SoundWaves camp and he is a founding member and performer in the Columbia River Chamber Music Festival in his hometown. He has taught and/or performed at the Oregon Coast Music Festival, Rocky Ridge Music Center, the Young Musicians and Artists program, the Puget Sound Chamber Music Workshop, and Lutheran Summer Music. He has composed a few and arranged dozens of pieces for NEBratsche, the viola ensemble at UNL.

In 2019, Potter traveled three times to Europe. In March, he conducted the Lincoln Youth Symphony in Rome. In April, he was invited to conduct a youth orchestra in Budapest comprised of student musicians from International Christian Schools from many of the major cities of Europe, Istanbul and Moscow. Then in October, Mr. Potter was invited to give a lecture regarding “The Shakespeare Project” and perform with the Trans-Nebraska Players, at the Musical Intersections in Practice conference held at Churchill College, Cambridge University in Cambridge, England. That performance included works which Potter arranged of orchestral pieces inspired by Shakespeare’s plays and readings by a Shakespeare scholar and actor at Churchill College.

Regarding research interests, Professor Potter’s efforts have moved in three principal directions: (1) he is currently performing, studying, and unearthing the concert works of Oscar-winning film composer, Ernest Gold; (2) he worked with faculty and students of UNL’s Biological Systems Engineering department to develop an instrument that measures breathing rates and intensities in upper string players; and (3) in 2022 he completed his edition of the six cello suites by Bach for viola following his lecture/recital on the sixth Bach Suite on a 5-string viola.

Prior to his appointment at Nebraska, Mr. Potter taught nine years at Eastern Oregon University, where he was associate professor of strings and conductor of the Grande Ronde Symphony. He received his graduate degrees from Indiana University and California Institute of the Arts and his bachelor’s degree from Western Washington University.

Clark would rather be at home than anywhere else in the world, however, enjoying time with his family, including wife, Jan; daughter Shannon and her whippets Apollo and Gemini; and son Samuel and his wife Alexandria, the first grandchild Hudson (!) and their pug Stinky Pete. He is a big baseball and Seattle Mariners fan, and his favorite hobby is to run and race on roads and trails year around. He recently completed his third triathlon and may be hooked.