As a versatile musician, Marcus Pyle is not only a violist and professor, but also founder and CEO of ChamberWorks Summer Institute. Dr. Pyle is currently the inaugural Franco Professor of the Humanities and Assistant Professor of Musicology at Davidson College. He is also the Artistic Director of the Davidson Concert Series, sponsored by WDAV and Interim Conductor of the Davidson Symphony Orchestra. Prior to Davidson he held positions at Tufts University and MIT. His peer-reviewed research has been published in 19th-Century Music and most recently in the Journal of Popular Music Studies. In support of his research and outreach, he has been awarded the Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship from the American Musicological Society and the NYU Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship. He is a full-scholarship graduate of New York University, where he was a MacCracken Fellow, and of Dartmouth College where he majored in Comparative Literature. Dr. Pyle was previously a scholarship student at the Juilliard School where he studied with Samuel Rhodes (formerly of the Juilliard String Quartet). He has had the privilege of being taught by violists Ellen Rose, Roberto Diaz, Hartmut Rohde, Jerzy Kosmala, and Yuko Inoue. With an insatiable curiosity, Mr. Pyle’s repertoire is wide, varied, and often obscure. He has unearthed and revived long-lost viola works by Erland von Koch, Scharwenka, and Blumenthal. He was invited to perform a recital at The Colburn School as part of the “Rising Stars” recital series hosted by the American Viola Society. In addition, he joined a panel of arts education experts in a discussion on strengthening the arts in impoverished communities, also at The Colburn School. Marcus has a standing offer to record his debut album with Centaur Records. He has performed recitals at the Tenri Cultural Institute, soloed with the Harvard University Orchestra, and is on the board of trustees for the Dvorak American Heritage Association. In 2022, he performed Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante as soloist with the Garland Symphony, Symphony Arlington, and the Las Colinas Symphony.

Before studying at Juilliard, he graduated with honors from the Royal Academy of Music in London, studying with Paul Silverthorne and Jon Thorne, where he was a prize-winner of the Theodore Holland Viola Competition. Dr. Pyle played with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, performed at Schoenbrunn Palace, Cadogan Hall, Henry Wood Hall, St. John’s Smith Square, and Royal Festival Hall, as well as performed concerts in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and Austria. He has done this while collaborating with conductors such as Semyon Bychkov, Sir Colin Davis Alan Gilbert, Sir Simon Rattle, Leif Segerstam, and Yan Pascal Tortelier. As a conductor, his teachers included Colin Metters, Sir Colin Davis, JoAnn Falletta, George Hurst, and Sarah Sproul. In London he performed with the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, Charities Philharmonia, Brent Symphony Orchestra, Verdandi Camerata, London Arts Orchestra, and the London Shostakovich Orchestra. And in the United States he has performed with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Clear Lake Symphony, Las Colinas Symphony, Garland Symphony, Symphony Arlington, and in the movie Annie (2014) alongside actors Jamie Foxx and Quvenzhané Wallis. In 2013, Dr. Pyle made it to the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall stages performing solo recitals and chamber concerts.

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Dr. Pyle believes firmly in bridging the gap between performer, teaching artist, scholar, and philanthropist. To this extent, he is the founder and CEO of ChamberWorks Summer Institute, featured in the Dallas Morning News, which provides low-cost, high-quality music education for low-income beginning to intermediate music students. In addition, as founding director and violist of the Locrian String Ensemble, Dr. Pyle curated half-a-decade of benefit concerts that have raised thousands of dollars for March of Dimes and Hope’s Door charities and was featured twice on WRR 101.1. For the publication of A Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons, Dr. Pyle premiered the composition “Waltz” by Jeff Rona. In addition to performing, he is a dedicated writer who is a regular contributor to Arco Magazine. To further bridge the gap between intellectual and performer, Dr. Pyle studied Music Psychology at Columbia University and, at Juilliard, held the positions of Graduate Teaching Fellow for Music History, Music Theory, and Morse Teaching Artist Fellow. He is currently President of the American Musicological Society Southeast Chapter and Council Member of the national American Musicological Society. In addition, he is Area Editor of the New Grove for Music and Guest Editor of Opera Quarterly.