About the lecturer

Tsutomu Will Copeland (b. 1998) is a Japanese-American musician who specializes in violin music before the year 1700. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area before pursuing degrees in modern and early violin at Curtis and at Juilliard, where he is currently in residence as a C. V. Starr Fellow in Historical Performance. He is writing his dissertation on the earliest surviving violin music, a set of virtuosic dance arrangements from Tudor England. At the violin, Will has led a variety of early music ensembles from New York to Tijuana in performances of underrepresented repertoire from the 16th century to today, and from modern-day premieres of early repertoire to newly composed music written for early instruments. He also enjoys playing violin-shaped objects such as the tenor viola, the lira da braccio, and the viola d'amore, and frequently composes, reconstructs, arranges, and transcribes early music for himself and others. Will is particularly happy when he gets to work on music which only survives in fragmentary form, and to share it with audiences for the first time in modern history. When he is not reading for school or for pleasure, you can find him on one of his extremely long walks.