American clarinetist Berginald Rash began his musical life as a saxophonist at the age of ten when at sixteen switching to the clarinet. Currently based in Ireland, Berginald is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Vivre Musicale and is a Teaching Fellow at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin where he works with John Finucane and Matthew Billing.

Since beginning the clarinet, Berginald Rash has set himself apart as a promising musician. In 2000 he was selected as a Young Artist for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. That same year Berginald served as guest bass clarinet with the Virginia Symphony in their performance of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony.

As a soloist, he has performed Scott McAllister’s Black Dog with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Wind Ensemble as the grand prize winner of the 2007-2008 Concerto Competition and recently Mozart's Clarinet Concerto K. 622 with the Dublin Symphony Orchestra. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with some of America's leading ensembles. Mr. Rash performed Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, Weber’s Clarinet Quintet, and was featured soloist in Rebecca Clarke’s Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale for Wisconsin State Senator Lena C. Taylor and former Wisconsin State Senator Gwen Moore at the Ozaukee County NAACP convention.

Equally comfortable in both contemporary and classical styles of music, Mr. Rash commissioned T. G. Gellar-Goad to write Sketches in Realization, a quintet for E-flat clarinet and string quartet and later received Forest Primeval, a new work written for him by Mr. Gellar-Goad. As Co-Founder & Artistc Director of Vivre Musicale he has also commissioned Irish composer, David Coonan to write Sonnets of Dark Love based on the eponymous poems by Federico Garcia Lorca.

Berginald can be heard playing basset clarinet with the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee Wind Ensemble on their recording of Mozart’s Serenade No. 10 for winds in B-flat, K. 361. In 2010, Mr. Rash joined the Lake Tahoe Summer Music Festival for the inaugural season of its Orchestral Academy. Berginald has performed in master classes and coaching sessions with such artists as Ricardo Morales, Mark Nuccio, Steve Barta, Steve Cohen, Ariana Ghez, Ted Soluri, Eric Ohlsson, Jeff Keesecker, Eva Amsler, Therese Fahy, Peter Tuite, Dairine Ni Mheadhra, Ann Murray, DBE, and members of the Vogler and Escher quartets. In December 2014, he participated in the European Chamber Music Teachers Association gathering where he received chamber music masterclasses by various teachers, including Pekka Helasvuo and Marje Lohuaru. In February 2015, Berginald made his solo debut at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Ireland and in June of the same year, as a member of the Vivre Musicale Trio, won the KBC Great Music in Irish Houses Festival Support Act-Residency.  This fall he joins the Chineke! Orchestra in its debut concert at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, making his London debut.

Berginald holds both a Bachelor of Music, cum laude and Bachelor of Arts in Spanish, cum laude from Florida State University, and a Master’s of Music from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts where he was a Chancellor’s Award recipient. His teachers include F. Edward Knakal, Deborah Bish, Frank Kowalsky, Todd Levy, and Vicent Alberola. Mr. Rash also holds a Master’s in Arts in Spanish and Latin American Cultural and Linguistic studies with a concentration in applied linguistics from New York University. 

Vivre Musicale is a non-profit chamber music collective that provides career advancement opportunities to contemporary, professional and pre-professional classical musicians through professional education, program diversification, and interdisciplinary collaboration focused on further enhancing the concert experience.

Winner of the 2011-2012 CMA/ASCAP award for Adventurous Programming and recipient of the 2012 Arts Council Music Commissions Award, Vivre Musicale is committed to thought-provoking concert programming that promotes community outreach, civic engagement, and social equality, drawing on the power of music to connect communities while furthering social dialogue.

In a world where classical music is besieged by class and culture wars, it is the music itself that must inspire, propel, and give voice. If Vivre is life, then Vivre Musicale is the living music, the chamber collective of the past, the present, and the future.

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