Duo Elegante

David Caplan recently completed graduate studies at the University of Michigan, studying cello with Amir Eldan. David has served as principal cello of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and has performed frequently with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Grant Park Orchestra. Recent engagements include a solo appearance in the Brahms Double concerto with conductor Michael Stern, concerts in Kansas City with the St. Petersburg Quartet, a world premiere at Northwestern University, a performance of Schubert’s Trout Quintet with Yaron Kohlberg, Fabiola Kim, Yizhak Schotten, and Nicholas Walker at the University of Michigan, and a live recital on WFMT Chicago through the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts Series. David is also a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has made appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, Taos School of Music, Chautauqua Festival, the Grant Park Music Festival, and the National Repertory Orchestra. As a fervent educator, David maintains a private studio in Chicago, and has been a frequent clinician at Midwest Young Artists Conservatory, ArtsAhimsa Music Festival, and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Willie McLellan is an active educator and performer in the Chicagoland based in Chicago. A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, his first experience playing a musical instrument was taking piano lessons at age 7 with a neighbor. Being eager to begin, he accidentally showed up a week early to his first lesson! A couple of years later he took up the violin in his school district’s orchestra program and was quickly hooked. Willie committed himself to learning the viola when his middle school string quartet had three violinists and a cello. Playing chamber music has been a great passion of his ever since.

Highlights of Mr. McLellan’s higher education include earning a BM in violin performance at UW-Madison under Felicia Moye, moving to Chicago for his MM in viola performance with Rami Solomonow at DePaul University, and recently acting as the viola teaching assistant to Tony Devroye at Northern Illinois University. He has been fortunate to study and perform at various summer music festivals such as the Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute in the north woods of Minnesota, the late Lorin Maazel’s Castleton festival based in rural Virginia, and Icicle Creek Center for the Arts in the Cascades.

In Chicago, Willie was a regular violist with the Civic Orchestra. During his two year tenure he played in the MusiCorps String Quartet, which gave presentations at elementary schools and performed at park district locations. Other ensembles he has played with include the Illinois, Rockford, and Oistrakh symphonies. He maintains a private studio and also teaches group lessons in public schools. Willie studied the Suzuki method with Ed Kreitman in Western Springs.

We are very flexible to any needs you have! The only thing that can get us into trouble is rain, which can destroy our instruments. We will be unable to perform outdoors should it begin to rain.