Press Photos
Oskar Espina Ruiz, Clarinet. Photo by Dario Acosta, 2021.
(Click on Photo for High Definition Download. Concert Bio Download and Press Quotes further down)
Bio
Oskar Espina Ruiz has emerged as one of the leading clarinetists of his generation, praised as a concerto soloist at the Casals Festival for his “masterful virtuosity” (El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico), and admired for his “rhapsodic ease” and “generous, tender warmth” (The Millbrook Independent) in chamber music collaborations with the top string quartets and piano trios of our time.
Press Quotes
Ulysses Quartet with Oskar Espina Ruiz Excites Wonder at Wethersfield
The Ulysses Quartet and Oskar Espina Ruiz, clarinet performed Thomas Adès Clarinet Quintet, “Alchymia” to a sold-out audience.
The Millbrook Independent (November 17, 2025)
“Excellent, hypnotic, mellow clarinet of Oskar Espina Ruiz”
Cuarteto Latinoamericano lifts the roof at Music Mountain
Cuarteto Latinoamericano and Oskar Espina Ruiz, clarinet performed Clarinet Quintets by Mozart and Gutiérrez Heras
The Millbrook Independent (August 25, 2025)
“Oskar on clarinet was hauntingly memorable. (…) It was as if Oskar had been playing for years with these four talented musicians!”
Music Mountain Winter Series: Terra String Quartet Delights at Wethersfield Estate
The Terra String Quartet and Oskar Espina Ruiz, clarinet performed Mozart Clarinet Quintet to a sold-out audience.
The Millbrook Independent (November 25, 2024)
“The gentle opening bars function as a recurring lyric motif, the clarinet dancing through the range of the instrument with Oskar Espina Ruiz (the genial Music Director of the Music Mountain series) swaying through a marvelous web of liquid notes trailing into the room while the strings overlay, bedecking the instrument as if it were a floating reverie available for each listener to fill in their cherished recollection.”
WBJC, Maryland’s Classical Music Station – November 2024
Jonathan Palevsky, Program Director at WBJC, speaks with Oskar Espina Ruiz about the great Brahms Clarinet Quintet ahead of his Chamber Music Maryland concert with the Ulysses Quartet.
Music Mountain Festival: American Quartet Delights audience at Music Mountain
The American String Quartet and Oskar Espina Ruiz, clarinet performed Brahms Clarinet Quintet to a sold-out audience.
The Millbrook Independent (July 29, 2024)
“No other work by Brahms enjoys such harmonious sonority tinged by autumnal resignation, especially in the tender sweetness of the lower register where Ruiz so excelled. High notes possessed a magisterial timbre. Color and tonality flowed with rhapsodic ease and mellow reverie, as the clarinet behaved like a solo instrument beholden to none. There is intense gratitude and happiness in the dream of a life fulfilled with achievement and satisfaction. One could get lost in the happy harmonies of the clarinet amid the supporting counterpoint of strings. The clarinet appeared to be a casual and carefree instrument that soared beyond the capacity of strings to emit heavenly music beyond categorization as if he was declaring that the clarinet might possibly be superior to the piano…. The audience demanded two strikingly lengthy bows..”
Music Mountain Festival: Balourdet Quartet Shines at Music Mountain
The Balourdet Quartet and Oskar Espina Ruiz, clarinet performed the Music Mountain premier of Anna Weesner’s The Eight Lost Songs of Orlando Underground for Clarinet Quintet (2018).
The Millbrook Independent (June 11, 2024)
“[Espina] Ruiz was most eloquent in the warm, sensitive lower notes of lament that communicated from ear to heart in the predicament of loss. The clarinet also functions as the conscience of the narrator’s perspective.”
Chamber Music Wilmington Presents the Superb Poulenc Trio
Poulenc Trio and Oskar Espina Ruiz, clarinet, perform Glinka, Ibert and Piazzolla.
CVNC (Mar 5, 2024)
“Superb clarinetist”
American Music Festival: Penderecki String Quartet Performs Colorfully for the American Music Festival
Penderecki String Quartet and Oskar Espina-Ruiz, clarinet, perform the Clarinet Quintets by Coleridge-Taylor and Mozart.
CVNC (Sept 30, 2023)
“The dolorous center section [in the Mozart Clarinet Quintet] was a little slower, but then the performers returned to an exciting major, with Espina Ruiz’s clarinet bubbling up through the strings like champagne bubbles in a narrow glass.”
Music Mountain Festival: Ulysses Quartet Sails onward at Music Mountain
The Millbrook Independent (August 7, 2023)
“I was stunned by this movement [in the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Clarinet Quintet]: the graceful, seemingly effortless way the Quintet played it, especially the generous, tender warmth of Oskar Espina Ruiz’s blooming clarinet.”
Festival Casals 2023: Metáforas de los pueblos
El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico (May 27, 2023)
“Espina Ruiz performed the cadenzas with masterful virtuosity.”
“El maestro Espina Ruiz dio una cátedra de virtuosismo en las cadenzas.”
Chamber Music Wilmington: The Merz Trio Returns in Stellar Fashion
Merz Trio and Oskar Espina-Ruiz, clarinet, perform Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.
CVNC (Nov 6, 2022)
“Espina-Ruiz was every bit the artistic equal of the Merz group. The long third movement, ‘Abyss of the Birds,’ is a clarinet solo. He sustained the movement in what might have been heard as a single long phrase. There were several extremely hushed entrances which grew into a long crescendo. It takes the finest of technical and dramatic control to create this shape.” (…) “The rhythmic complexities of the sixth movement ‘Dance of Fury’ were handled by the quartet as a whole with what seemed like effortless mastery.”
The Ulysses Quartet Presents an Unusual Program
Chamber Music Wilmington
The Ulysses Quartet and Oskar Espina-Ruiz, clarinet, perform Brahms Clarinet Quintet.
CVNC (Nov 7, 2021)
“Espina-Ruiz played with sensitivity and rich tone, standing out with soaring long phrases, or weaving expressively into the surrounding string lines.”
Spanish Rarities Spice a Fine Evening of Music for Clarinet and String Quartet
Carolina Chamber Symphony: “Mozart’s Genius: Clarinet and String”
Oskar Espina-Ruiz, clarinet
CVNC (Aug 25, 2015)
“Espina-Ruiz’s dexterity was astonishing, with wonderfully clean rapid passages combined with a warm, glowing tone.”
Music@Watson Presents Splendid Brahms and Schubert
The American String Quartet and Oskar Espina-Ruiz
CVNC (Oct. 2, 2012)
“Mr. Espina Ruiz is a phenomenal clarinetist – a subtle and discreet virtuoso whose dynamic control matched that of the string quartet.”
Archived Concert Review
Oskar Espina Ruiz at the Treetops Chamber Music Society, Stamford, CT, with Metropolitan Opera Orchestra artists
Jeffrey Johnson, Stamford Advocate, CT
September 21, 2008
“The outer movements [of “Assobio a Jato” (“The Jet Whistle”) by Heitor Villa-Lobos, transcribed for clarinet and cello by Espina Ruiz] became a showcase for the crystalline high register of Espina Ruiz, who plays in the stratosphere of his instrument with freakish clarity and precision.”
Archived Concert Review
Oskar Espina Ruiz and Noriko Nagasawa in Recital, Teatro Nacional, San José, Costa Rica
Andrés Sáenz, La Nación, San José, Costa Rica
July 23, 2006
“Masterful soloist: polished sound, fine intonation, sustained breath and agile fingering supported interpretations of a pure musicality.”
Archived Concert Review
Concerto performance of Oskar Espina Ruiz with the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony, Philharmonic Hall, St. Petersburg, Russia
Alina Tsiopa, Nevskoye Vremia, St. Petersburg, Russia
July 13, 2005
“The interpretation of Oskar Espina Ruiz was highly expressive, perfect in all the details and virtuosically executed.”
AN APPRECIATION FROM CHARLES NEIDICH
Julián Menéndez, an Appreciation
Charles Neidich, liner notes to Julián Menéndez Rediscovered, Kobaltone KB 13703, 2004.
July 29, 2004
“(…) The 2 CDs of his clarinet and piano music, wonderfully performed by Oskar Espina Ruiz, Noriko Nagasawa, and Keiko Kurachi opened my eyes and ears to one of the most significant clarinetists of the twentieth century. Menéndez, judging by his compositions, must have been a formidable virtuoso. (…) Menéndez’s music, I realized listening to these CDs, fills an important niche for the clarinet. While we have operatic fantasias and virtuosic show pieces, aside from a couple of attempts by French composers, we have virtually no late romantic concerto-tone poems which, for instance, make up an important part of the violin repertoire, of which Chausson’s Poem is one of the outstanding examples. Oskar Espina Ruiz plays the music with great feeling and technical aplomb. He shows how in Menéndez’s compositions, the clarinet soars like a violin.”
AN APPRECIATION FROM VICENTE PEÑARROCHA
From a Menéndez Disciple
J. Vicente Peñarrocha, liner notes to Julián Menéndez Rediscovered, Kobaltone KB 13703, 2004.
July 29, 2004
“This recording of the works for clarinet and piano by Julián Menéndez is the result of the profound knowledge of Oskar Espina Ruiz, of his excellent technique and his sensitivity, and of his acknowledgement and appreciation of the figure and the oeuvre of an extraordinary clarinetist and excellent musician. As a disciple and admirer of Don Julián Menéndez, I express my gratitude in his name, as well as in the name of all of us who appreciate his figure and oeuvre.”
AN APPRECIATION FROM RICHARD STOLTZMAN
“Bravo and Congratulations”
Richard Stoltzman, liner notes to Julián Menéndez Rediscovered, Kobaltone KB 13703, 2004.
July 29, 2004
“You have performed a great service to all clarinetists and have truly honored the memory of this Spanish master of the clarinet. I listened to both CD’s with growing admiration for Menéndez as composer clarinetist, and for you as master interpreter of his music. Bravo and congratulations. You have opened a beautiful treasure chest of repertoire for the world of clarinetists. Well done!”
ARCHIVED CONCERT REVIEW
Oskar Espina Ruiz in Recital, Centro Cultural de España, Asunción, Paraguay
José Luis De Tone, ABC, Asunción, Paraguay
November 30, 2002
“Through bewitching vibrancy and expressiveness Oskar Espina Ruiz brings forth the notes with an energy that reaches down to one’s soul.”
ARCHIVED CONCERT REVIEW
Oskar Espina Ruiz and Keiko Kurachi in Recital, Luther Ichigaya, Tokyo, Japan
Eiichi Hashimoto, The Clarinet, Japan
September 7, 2000
“Extremely advanced technique and passion.”
