"Zen Garden": Nature, Life and Love I
ADDA Symphonic Orchestra Alicante
Patrick Messina — clarinet
Josep Vicent — principal conductor
Dvořák — Carnival Overture
Tan Dun — Three Lotuses in the Zen Garden
Clarinet Concerto — World Premiere
Dvořák — Symphony No. 9 "From the New World"
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PATRICK MESSINA — clarinet
Patrick Messina is one of the world’s most distinguished clarinetists, with an acclaimed career spanning both Europe and the United States—where he completed part of his training. A protégé of violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who called him “the magical clarinetist”, Messina is also a renowned pedagogue in France and beyond.
Of Spanish and Sicilian descent, Messina was born in Nice, France. He studied clarinet with Guy Deplus and Michel Arrignon, earning top prizes in both clarinet and chamber music at the Paris Conservatoire at just eighteen years old.
He later moved to the United States to continue his studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Mannes College of Music in New York.
Messina gained widespread recognition in 1992 when he was named a laureate of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation.
He won several major awards in the U.S., including the East and West International Auditions (New York), the Heida Hermanns International Music Competition, and the Ima Hogg National Competition in Houston. In 1996, he began working with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York.
In 2003, he returned to France to become principal clarinetist of the Orchestre National de France under Kurt Masur.
Messina has also served as guest principal clarinetist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.
As a concert soloist, he has performed with the Orchestre National de France, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the Cannes Orchestra, ADDA Symphonic Orchestra Alicante, the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra, and the Kioi Sinfonietta Tokyo, under conductors including Riccardo Muti, Bernard Haitink, Trevor Pinnock, Yehudi Menuhin, Daniele Gatti, Jaap van Zweden, Josep Vicent, Sasha Goetzel, and Kristjan Järvi.
Messina has collaborated in chamber music with Daniel Hope, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Philippe Bianconi, Edita Gruberova, Garrick Ohlsson, Fabrizio Chiovetta, Antoine Tamestit, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Kian Soltani, Lise Berthaud, Edgar Moreau, the Fine Arts Quartet, the Beaux Arts Trio, and the Philharmonia Berlin Quartett.
He is an Honorary Member of the prestigious Royal Academy of Music in London, where he has been a visiting professor since 2011. He also teaches at the École Normale Alfred Cortot in Paris.
His interpretation of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622, conducted by Riccardo Muti, was recorded and released by Harmonia Mundi. The recording received outstanding critical acclaim and was described as “one of the greatest performances of the last twenty years.”