Nina Stern has carved a unique and astonishingly diverse career for herself as a world-class recorder player and classical clarinetist. A native New Yorker, Ms. Stern studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, where she received a Soloist’s Degree. From Basel, she moved to Milan, Italy where she was offered a teaching position at the Civica Scuola di Musica. Ms. Stern performs widely on recorders, chalumeaux, and historical clarinets. She has appeared as a soloist or principal player with orchestras such as The New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera, American Classical Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Philharmonia Baroque, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, La Scala Theatre Orchestra, Clarion Orchestra, I Solisti Veneti, Hesperion XX, Opera Lafayette, Handel and Haydn Society, and Tafelmusik. Her numerous festival and concert series appearances have included performances under leading conductors such as Loren Maazel, Kurt Masur, Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock, Claudio Scimone, Kent Tritle, Jane Glover, Bruno Weil, Ton Koopman, Andrew Parrot , Harry Christophers, and Jordi Savall. She has recorded for Erato, Harmonia Mundi, Sony Classics, Newport Classics, Wildboar, Telarc, MSR, Good Child Music, and Smithsonian labels.
Nina Stern’s latest projects include performances and recordings of traditional music of Eastern Europe, Armenia, and The Middle East, as a soloist, and with her ensembles Rose of the Compass and East of the River (Daphna Mor, co-Director.) In recent years, Rose of the Compass has collaborated annually with the conductor Kent Tritle and the Choir of St. John the Divine in creating programs for the "Great Music in a Great Space" concert series at the Cathedral. Her most recent solo album, The Crane, was released in 2019 on the Good Child Music label.
Ms. Stern was appointed to the faculty of Juilliard’s Historical Performance program in 2012 and has served on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music – where she directed the Historical Performance Program from 1989 to 1996 – the Civica Scuola di Musica (Milan, Italy), Oberlin Conservatory, and the Five Colleges in Massachusetts.
Nina Stern is also hailed as an innovator in teaching school-age children to be fine young musicians. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of “S’Cool Sounds" a successful hands-on music education project.. The Washington Post applauded this program as a model in its “innovation in the classroom” series (11/9/03). For this important work Ms. Stern was awarded an Endicott Fellowship in 2003 and was honored by Early Music America in 2005 with the “Early Music Brings History Alive” Award and again in 2019 with the Laurette Goldberg Award for Achievement in Early Music Outreach.
Nina Stern served as Director of Education for the New York Collegium from 2002-2007. She has consulted for Midori & Friends and for Carnegie Hall’s Weill Institute, helping them to develop and expand their recorder curriculum. She is the author of “Recorders Without Borders” - two books for beginning recorder players and percussion. Ms. Stern has shared her teaching methods with students and teachers throughout the U.S., in the Netherlands and Belgium, and has worked to establish recorder programs in several schools in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, at Village Health Works in Kigutu, Burundi and at a school for Syrian refugee children in Azraq, Jordan.