Neil Gladd - Biography

Neil Gladd received his B.A. in Music from Virginia Tech in 1978, but is entirely self-taught as a mandolinist, as the instrument was not then taught at any school in the U.S. He has appeared as a mandolin soloist at Carnegie Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution, at mandolin festivals in Germany, Sweden, Belgium and Japan, as well as in recital in Canada, England, France and the U.S. He has appeared on national television on the PBS American Experience series (If You Knew Sousa) and onstage as a costumed musician for the Shakespeare Theatre's productions of "The Comedy of Errors" and "Much Ado About Nothing" (with Kelly McGillis and David Selby). He has also played orchestra mandolin parts with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, the Delaware Symphony, The Orchestra of the New York City Ballet, the Wolf Trap Opera, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Rostropovich, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Simon Rattle.

In addition to being a performer, Mr. Gladd is also a composer, and an authority on the mandolin repertoire and early mandolin recordings on 78s and cylinders. He has an extensive collection of these recordings, and has been researching a mandolin discography for many years.

The first of his own compositions were published in 1982 by Plucked String Editions (then the only U.S. publisher of classical mandolin music.) His Sonata I for Solo Mandolin has been performed by other mandolinists in Germany, France, England, Austria, Australia and Japan and recorded twice by European mandolinists. His mandolin ensemble arrangement of The Red Bach Book: 3 Rags After Bach (originally for piano) has been recorded 6 times. After Plucked String Editions went out of business in 2005, he started his own publishing company, Neil Gladd Publications, in 2007, to continue publishing new and historic mandolin repertoire.