Music Instructors

Travis teaches violin and viola for ages 5-18, as well as group classes through SDSU’s String Academy.

www.travismaril.com

tmaril@sdsu.edu

(858) 245-4340

Travis Maril is Lecturer of Viola at San Diego State University, where he coordinates the String Division and serves as Co-Director of the SDSU String Academy for Pre-College Students. In the summers he teaches at the San Diego Summer Music Institute and has also taught at the Interharmony Music Festival (Italy).

A passionate chamber musician, Mr. Maril won a top prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and had performances broadcast on “Performance Today” with the Hyperion Quartet. He has performed with the Miró Quartet, concertmasters of the Cleveland Orchestra, LA Philharmonic and Rochester Philharmonic, principal players in the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and San Diego Symphonies, and members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Festival appearances include Ojai, Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, and repeat appearances with the Mainly Mozart Festival and La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest.

Locally he appears often with Art of Elan, Camarada, the Danny Green Trio, and as a regular substitute with the San Diego Symphony.  For several years he performed and recorded with local band The Tree Ring, whose debut album won a San Diego Music Award.  In addition he has been an active performer of musical theatre at the Old Globe and Civic Theaters, performing on the original productions of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” Steve Martin’s “Bright Star,” and Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous.”

In the pop realm he has shared the stage with Christina Aguilera, Belle & Sebastian, Idina Menzel, The Who, and many others.  He has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the composer Joel P. West and performed as solo violinist and violist for many of his scores, including the critically-acclaimed “Short Term 12,” “I Am Not a Hipster,” “Grandma,” and episodes of “Chef’s Table” and “Street Food” on Netflix. He also performed on West’s score for the film “Just Mercy,” which opens in 2020.

As a soloist he has been a winner of the La Jolla Young Artist Competition and Aspen Music Festival Concerto Competition, the latter win resulting in a performance of Walter Piston’s Viola Concerto with the Aspen Academy of Conducting Orchestra. He has toured Europe with the Schleswig Holstein Festival Orchestra and been awarded fellowships to the Aspen and Bowdoin Music Festivals, the Emerson String Quartet Workshop, the Banff Institute, New York String Seminar and Music Academy of the West.

Mr. Maril’s students have held principal positions in the San Diego Youth Symphony and have attended Itzhak Perlman’s Music Program, Music Academy of the West and the Bowdoin International Music Festival.  They have gone on to study or gained admission to prestigious institutions including The Juilliard School, Northwestern University, the New England Conservatory, Indiana University and the Cincinnati Conservatory. He is a frequent clinician for the music teachers in San Diego unified schools, and has served as an adjudicator for the VOCE and ASTA competitions of San Diego.

Mr. Maril earned his B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Southern California’s Thorton School of Music, where he was a Trustee Scholar and selected as an Outstanding Graduate.  He earned his M.M. from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. His principal viola teachers included Jeffrey Irvine, Ralph Fielding, Karen Ritscher, Brian Chen and Donald McInnes. His chamber music mentors include James Dunham, Norman Fischer and Peter Marsh with additional coachings and masterclasses with members of the Guarneri, Orion, Takacs, Ysaye and Juilliard Quartets.