As a young man, violist David Aaron Carpenter had extraordinary teachers—world-famous musicians such as violinist Pinchas Zukerman and violists Roberto Diaz and Yuri Bashmet—who shaped him as an artist and helped open his path to the heights of the classical music world.
Now Carpenter hopes to do the same for his students at the Frost School of Music, where he is a visiting assistant professor for the 2026-27 school year, substituting for professor Jodi Levitz while she is on sabbatical.
“I’ve had some of the greatest mentors on the planet,” Carpenter said. “When I’m in a lesson, I pick and choose from what I’ve learned, using all this knowledge from all these different teachers. That’s what I’m trying to impart to students.”
“My job this year is to inspire them.”
Carpenter’s own formidable record as a highly acclaimed musician should go far in inspiring students. He is the winner of the 2011 Leonard Bernstein Award and the 2006 Walter E. Naumburg Viola Competition, among other honors; has performed with innumerable leading orchestras and ensembles around the world and with such famous artists as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yo-Yo Ma, Emmanuel Ax and Jean-Yves Thibaudet; and recorded multiple critically acclaimed albums.
“It’s nice having these experiences playing concertos and with major orchestras around the world,” said Carpenter, who is 40. “I was teaching the Bartók viola concerto yesterday—I recently had a great experience recording it—and it was nice to tell the student that the oboe comes in there or the string section is very strong here, and what is happening in that passage. I want to create an atmosphere where they understand what the composer is asking for.”
His appointment made news in the classical music world, with articles in The Strad and The Violin Channel.
Levitz said Carpenter’s combination of deep musical understanding and outstanding achievement is a tremendous boon to her students. “Having someone with David’s depth of experience as a performer—and someone who is still actively building his own artistic career—is tremendously valuable,” said Levitz. “At this stage in their development, they need not only excellent technical and musical instruction but also models for what a contemporary career in music can look like.”
The pandemic is what allowed this extraordinary artist to teach at the Frost School. Carpenter was heading home to New York from performances in South America in March of 2020 when he stopped off to visit Miami (which he had visited as one of the teenage winners of the National YoungArts competition, when he was also named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts), and thought it would be a good place to wait out what he thought would be a short disruption. He, his brother Sean and sister Lauren, their mother and 98-year-old grandmother moved from the New York area to Miami.
“We all got on a plane and said, ' Grandma, don’t worry, it’ll be fine; we’ll be in Miami for a few weeks,” Carpenter said. “It was definitely an interesting time.”
Though his grandmother moved back to the Northeast, Carpenter and the rest of his family remained. He connected with Levitz, who knew of him through colleagues and former students, after attending a Frost School concert, and she brought him in to teach several masterclasses, where he was impressed by the quality of her studio. He began coming to concerts and connecting with the Frost School community. He also met his partner, pianist Halle Puckett, who earned her DMA in keyboard performance from the Frost School in May and is currently teaching in the Frost Preparatory program; the couple performed together at Newman Recital Hall in the fall of 2024.
Although Carpenter has taught masterclasses throughout his career, this is his first experience teaching full-time and at a university-level music school. A prodigy raised by a single mother on Long Island, he began studying violin at age 6, then switched to the viola at 12, studying in the pre-college divisions of The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, as well as at European academies. Instead of going on to a conservatory, however, he earned a bachelor’s in political science and international relations at Princeton University—while studying weekends at the Curtis Institute of Music with its current president Roberto Diaz, then the principal violist at the Philadelphia Orchestra, and as a protégé of Pinchas Zukerman in the prestigious Rolex Mentoring Program.
Carpenter has just begun working one-on-one with the 12 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students in the Frost School viola studio. “They’re truly top quality,” he said. “By the end of each lesson, I could already see incredible progression.”
He draws from a deep reservoir of artistry and learning, focusing on musical expression and character, fine-tuned for each student the way his mentors did for him. “With Zukerman it might be the bow arm,” he said. “With vibrato I would focus on Nobuko Imai. With Yuri Bashmet, when we talked about Shubert, we’d work for hours on how the musical phrase would shape an idea in a passage.”
He praised how fellow faculty members have welcomed him. “They’re guiding me in the best possible way,” Carpenter said. “I’m really appreciative of that.”
It may seem counter-intuitive for an artist as busy as Carpenter to teach full time. But Levitz, who also began transitioning from successful musician to teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music around Carpenter’s age, said it was an understandable evolution. “I think this is a very natural moment in his career to begin devoting more time to teaching and mentoring the next generation of musicians,” she said. “So I think the opportunity was attractive to both of us: David gets to spend a year with an exceptional group of young violists at Frost, and I get to know that my students are in the hands of someone whose artistic experience and perspective I deeply respect.”
Carpenter brings other assets to the Frost School, which he will explore in a September 18 lecture on music and entrepreneurship at Gusman Concert Hall. He has a busy and popular Instagram account. In 2010, he and his older siblings, both accomplished violinists as well as Princeton graduates, created Carpenter Fine Violins to buy and sell Stradivari and Guarneri violins and other rare instruments by Italian or French masters, which can be worth millions of dollars. (Carpenter said they now concentrate on holding, rather than dealing, the instruments.) They have used that success to support their non-profit Salomé Chamber Orchestra; the company’s clients sometimes allow their instruments to be used in concerts by Salomé, which often performs for charities. Their efforts were featured in the New York Times and the New Yorker.
Carpenter, whose main viola is a 1766 Michele Deconet, is looking at loaning some of those invaluable instruments to his students, for whom being able to play on a world-class viola can make a crucial difference in winning a major award or competition. “That’s what Roberto Diaz did for me as a freshman at Princeton,” said Carpenter. “He loaned me his Camillo Camilli viola, one of the greatest I’ve ever played. It changed the trajectory of my career. So if I could do the same thing for someone else, I will.”
