Program Notes: Israeli Chamber Project
PROGRAM INFORMATION
Israeli Chamber Project
with
Karim Sulayman, Tenor
Saturday, March 11, 2023
7:30 PM
Bing Concert Hall
Artists
Karim Sulayman, tenor
David McCarroll, violin
Kobi Malkin, violin
Guy Ben-Ziony, viola
Michal Korman, cello
Tibi Cziger, clarinet
Assaff Weisman, piano
Program
SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)
Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34 (1919)
NAJI HAKIM (b. 1955)
Two Maronite Carols for tenor and string quartet (2013)
Shubho lhaw qolo (Glory to the voice)
Talbé Marounieh (Christmas Maronite Litanies)
Die Taube (The Dove), for tenor and string quartet (2005)
AARON COPLAND (1900–90)
Sextet for clarinet, piano and string quartet (1933/37)
Allegro Vivace: in a bold, rhythmic style throughout –
Lento –
Finale: Precise and rhythmic
-Intermission-
HARRISON BIRTWISTLE (1934-2022)
Love Song 1, for tenor and piano, from Bogenstrich: Meditations on a poem of Rilke, (2006-09)
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Fantasiestücke, Op. 73 (1849), arranged by Jonathan Keren for clarinet and string quartet. (ICP commission)
Zart und mit Ausdruck (Tender and with expression) –
Lebhaft, leicht (Lively, light) –
Rasch und mit Feuer (Quick and with fire)
SAMUEL BARBER (1910-1981)
Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24 (1947), arranged by Yuval Shapiro. (ICP commission)
Season Sponsor:
Media Sponsor:
PROGRAM SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Please be considerate of others and turn off all phones, pagers, and watch alarms. Photography and recording of any kind are not permitted. Thank you.
Program Notes
SERGEI PROKOFIEV
Born in Sontsovka, Russia [now Krasnoye, Ukraine] April 15/27, 1891; died in Moscow, March 5, 1953
Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34 (1919)
The Russian Revolution prompted Prokofiev to leave the chaos of his homeland and begin what became a rootless existence for the next 17 years. His first main stop, in early September 1918, was New York, where he thought he could be profitably occupied for a few months, then return home. By the Fall of the following year, still in New York and having made successful débuts as both pianist and composer, he met up with six former fellow students from the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Their sextet, named Zimro, had been touring many countries since the Revolution, playing music to raise money for a new conservatory in Jerusalem. The sextet played in various combinations of string quartet, clarinet and piano, but lacked a piece that allowed all six to play together. So, their leader, clarinetist Simeon Bellison, asked Prokofiev for a new overture that they could use in their concerts, and gave him a notebook of Jewish melodies to incorporate into the piece.
At first, Prokofiev could summon little enthusiasm to go against his declared rule of only using his own melodies in a composition. But, after spending an evening improvising on two of the themes and finding that he could produce “several well-knit passages” from them, he spent the following day sketching the entire piece, paying particular attention to the timbre of the instruments. The resulting eight-minute Overture on Hebrew Themes incorporates two themes with a Jewish flavor and is structured in classic sonata-form. While its harmonies and textures often evoke klezmer music, Prokofiev’s distinctive, edgy voice remains strong.
NAJI HAKIM
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, on October 31, 1955
Two Maronite Carols for tenor and string quartet (2013)
Die Taube (The Dove), for tenor and string quartet (2005)
Franco-Lebanese organist and composer Naji Hakim, who has lived most of his life in Paris, succeeded Olivier Messiaen as organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, from 1993 until 2008. He has held other organist posts in Paris and taught in both Paris and London.
Scored for tenor and string quartet, Die Taube (The Dove) draws its text from three Biblical verses expressing peace. “The piece shows my hope to have our churches not only in peace but also in full communion,” says Hakim.
Naji Hakim’s Lebanese musical background draws from two main sources : folkloric songs and Maronite chant, the latter being the equivalent to Gregorian chant in Lebanon. “Both of these have provided thematic material and characteristic mid-Eastern melismas, scales and irregular meters,” he says. The first of the Two Maronite Carols, for tenor and string quartet, Shubho lhaw qolo (Glory to the voice) draws from an Aramean text by Fourth century Christian theologian Saint Ephrem. “The melody dates from an earlier period and is considered the oldest in the Maronite repertoire,” says Hakim. He also states that Talbé Marounieh (Christmas Maronite Litanies) is drawn from a popular anonymous carol on a folk melody incorporated into the liturgy in the 18th century.
AARON COPLAND
Born in Brooklyn, NY, November 14, 1900; died in Peekskill, NY, December 2, 1990
Sextet for clarinet, piano and string quartet (1933/37)
“One learns to have patience,” American composer Aaron Copland said wryly of the checkered history of the Sextet, now recognized as one of the landmark works in his catalog. Its origins lie in the second of the composer’s three symphonies, a work he titled Short Symphony because of its brevity. Copland wrote it in Mexico in 1933 and his friend Carlos Chávez gave the première in Mexico City the following year. Both Stokowski in Philadelphia and Koussevitzky in Boston were scheduled to give North American premières, but both found Copland’s intricate rhythmic writing too challenging for their orchestras in the allotted rehearsal time. Copland was bitterly disappointed. “Although the performance time is only 15 minutes, it took me, on and off, almost two years to complete it. On other occasions I’ve written 15 minutes of music in two weeks: if I expended so much time and effort on the Short Symphony it was because I wanted to write as perfect a piece as I could.”
The symphony took on new life four years later when Copland made a transcription as a Sextet for string quartet with clarinet and piano. Its three movements are played without break. The opening five-note fanfare from the strings and leaping, equally brief reply from the piano – just two measures in sum – are the building blocks from which Copland constructs his buoyant, transparent, rhythmically driven opening movement. It has the character of a scherzo. “Once, I toyed with the idea of naming the piece The Bounding Line because of the nature of the first section,” Copland said. The second movement, calmer and tranquil in feeling at the outset, plays with the tension, which increases until released by a pastoral, folk-like theme in the central section. The Finale reviews and synthesizes what has gone before in music that is, in the composer’s words, “bright in color, rhythmically intricate and free in form.”
HARRISON BIRTWISTLE
Born in Accrington, England on July 15, 1934; died in Mere, England on April 18, 2022
Love Song 1, for tenor and piano, from Bogenstrich: Meditations on a poem of Rilke, (2006-09)
A late starter, it was many years before English composer Harrison Birtwistle sold the clarinets that helped pay his bills and took up a Harkness fellowship and a career as composer. That same year, 1965, he completed Tragoedia for opposing wind quintet and string quartet, with harp mediating between the two. The Mask of Orpheus (1986), 15 years in the making, hugely complex and, at four hours duration, a formidable challenge to stage, fuses music, song, drama, myth, mime, and electronics, and went on to win the Grawemeyer Award the following year. Birtwistle’s creative life continued well into his eighties, bringing international recognition as England’s leading composer since Britten. Sir Harrison Birtwistle received many awards and commissions from around the world but remained fiercely independent and notoriously curmudgeonly to the end. “I’m not Establishment,” he might say, gruffly. “People think I am, but I’m not.”
The intimacy of chamber music helps provide a pathway to the rigorously modernistic, intricately woven Birtwistle textures. Bogenstrich (Bow-stroke) has a three-movement cello sonata at its heart, book-ended by two vocal meditations on Liebeslied by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Rilke’s image of a bow stroke draws a single voice from two strings symbolizing lovers. The first of the love songs (the one to be performed this evening) is for piano and voice, the last for cello and voice. They are interrelated, with the first additionally providing a mirror which reflects the subsequent cello-piano movement, titled Song Without Words.
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, nr Bonn, July 29, 1856
Fantasiestücke, Op. 73 (1849), arranged by Jonathan Keren for clarinet and string quartet
In 1849, a year Schumann described as his ‘most fruitful,’ he wrote some three dozen works in a wide variety of genres. They include a handful of chamber music pieces designed for the broader market of music lovers. This is hausmusik, or music for the home. In each piece, he pairs the piano with a then often-neglected instrument: the Fantasy Pieces Op. 73 for clarinet, Adagio and Allegro Op. 70 for horn, Five Pieces in Folk Style Op. 102 for cello, and the Three Romances Op. 94 for oboe. When first published, the Fantasy Pieces further broadened the market by suggesting ad libitum violin or cello in place of clarinet. Together with the Fairy-Tales Op. 113 for viola, these poetic collections of miniatures show Schumann as storyteller; the pieces suggest an underlying conversational narrative as they pass one brief idea back and forth, from one instrument to another. The conversation is amplified in Israeli composer and violinist/violist Jonathan Keren’s arrangement for solo clarinet with a string quartet in place of piano. The three pieces form an organic whole, since they are linked by both key and musical themes and follow one another with increasing momentum, without break. In the first, the violin introduces a dreamy, melancholy theme, while the piano presents another, complementing it. As the song-like second movement opens, this piano theme is heard again, quite transformed into something more joyful, now in the major key. Similarly, the second movement’s smoothly chromatic middle section later returns as a distant echo. Almost immediately, Schumann transforms it into a vigorous flourish that bursts into life at the beginning of the third movement. More references to themes from the opening movement underline the superb craft of these delightful pieces.
SAMUEL BARBER
Born in West Chester, PA, USA, March 09, 1910; died in New York, January 23, 1981
Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24 (1947), arranged by Yuval Shapiro
In 1935, American novelist, writer and critic James Agee (1909-55) experimented with the idea of adapting the process of jazz improvisation to his writing. Dispensing with multiple drafts and text revision, he used what he called ‘improvised writing’ to capture “a certain kind of ‘genuine’ lyric.” He wrote Knoxville in about 90 minutes and only revised two per-cent of the text when he published the short story in The Partisan Reader three years later. “There is little if anything consciously invented in it,” Agree said. “It is strictly autobiographical.”
Almost a decade later, the young American composer Samuel Barber set the final third of Agee’s prose-poem as a ‘lyric rhapsody’ for soprano and full orchestra. Agee’s writing offered a rhythmic, musical text, rich in possibilities for word painting. It expresses a child’s-eye view of an idyllic, small-town backyard in the early evening remembered, with nostalgic affection, some years later as an adult. The poem effortlessly switches back and forth between the child’s world and that of the adult, adding to the languid, dreamlike quality of the piece. Its emotions and sense of belonging tap into a universal feeling for home and identity as well as expressing Agee’s sense of loss at the death of his father. Barber, too, was grieving for his dying father when he composed the music and dedicated it to his memory.
After the première, Barber scaled down his orchestral resources, re-scoring the piece for a chamber orchestra of seven wind and brass instruments, harp, triangle, and strings. A short orchestral introduction soon leads into the gently rocking main theme, with just a hint of the blues. It is to recur several times – though never with the same instrumentation – and gives the score a rondo-like structure. The honesty and simplicity of Agee’s words as the five-year-old child lists the things around him are mirrored by Barber’s music which hovers around a basic repeated-note musical cell. Both words and music grow increasingly rich and subtle as the generally peaceful, poetic feeling unfolds. A note of uncertainty is introduced when the calmness is punctuated by the sound of a streetcar. But the falling night brings back a sense of security and comfort in familiar sights, sounds and family. Still, an unspoken uncertainty remains as the child’s mind contemplates life, God and death and offers a final prayer before being taken away to bed. We become aware that only a symbolic thin quilt separates him from the “rough wet grass.” But the music assures us that there is hope behind the loneliness of his final plea to be allowed to discover his own identity.
— Program notes © 2023 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: khnotes@sympatico.ca
Texts and Translations
NAJI HAKIM (b. 1955)
Die Taube (The Dove) (2005)
And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off. (Genesis 8:11)
To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:79)
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. (John 14:27)
HARRISON BIRTWISTLE (1934-2022)
Love Song 1, from the song cycle Bogenstrich
| Liebeslied | Love Song |
| Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß | How shall I hold my soul, so |
| sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie | It does not touch yours? How shall I |
| hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen? | lift it over you stretching to other things? |
| Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwas | Ah, gladly would I hide it |
| Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen | with something lost in darkness |
| an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die | at an unknown quiet place |
| nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen. | abating while your depths vibrate. |
| Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich, | Yet all that touches us, you and me, |
| nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich, | conjoins us like a stroke of a bow, |
| der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht. | which draws but one voice from two strings. |
| Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt? | Upon which instrument are we strung? |
| Und welcher [Geiger]1 hat uns in der Hand? | And who is the fiddler who holds us in his hand? |
| O süßes Lied. | O sweet song. |
| Rainer Maria Rilke (transl. Jochen Voigt) |
Knoxville: Summer of 1915
Prose-poem by James Agee, arranged into lines by Samuel Barber)
It has become that time of evening
when people sit on their porches
Rocking gently and talking gently
And watching the street
And the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees
of birds' hung havens, hangars
People go by, things go by
A horse, drawing a buggy
breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt
A loud auto, a quiet auto
People in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling
switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually
the taste hovering over them
of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard, and starched milk
The image upon them of lovers and horsemen
squaring with clowns in hueless amber
A streetcar raising its iron moan
Stopping, belling, and starting, stertorous
Rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan
And swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past
The bleak spark crackling and cursing above it
Like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks
The iron whine rises on rising speed
Still risen, faints, halts
The faint stinging bell, rises again, still fainter
fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone, forgotten
Now is the night one blue dew
Now is the night one blue dew
My father has drained, he has coiled the hose
Low in the length of lawns, a frailing of fire who breathes
Parents on porches, rock and rock
From damp strings morning glories hang their ancient faces
The dry and exalted noise of the locusts
from all the air at once enchants my eardrums
On the rough wet grass of the back yard
my father and mother have spread quilts
We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt
and I too am lying there
They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet
of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all
The stars are wide and alive
They seem each like a smile of great sweetness
and they seem very near
All my people are larger bodies than mine
with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds
One is an artist, he is living at home
One is a musician, she is living at home
One is my mother who is good to me
One is my father who is good to me
By some chance, here they are, all on this earth
And who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth
Lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening
among the sounds of the night
May God bless my people
My uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father
Oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble
and in the hour of their taking away
After a little I am taken in and put to bed
Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her
And those receive me, who quietly treat me
as one familiar and well-beloved in that home
but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever
but will not ever tell me who I am
About the Artists
Now in its second decade, the Israeli Chamber Project is a dynamic ensemble comprising strings, winds, harp, and piano, that brings together some of today's most distinguished musicians for chamber music concerts and educational and outreach programs both in Israel and abroad. It was named the winner of the 2011 Israeli Ministry of Culture Outstanding Ensemble Award and 2017 Partos Prize in recognition of its passionate musicianship, creative programming, and commitment to educational outreach.
Based both in Israel and in New York, the ensemble was created as a means for its members to give something back to the community where they began their musical education and to showcase Israeli culture, through its music and musicians to concert goers overseas. Among its members are prize-winners at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Russia, the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the Gaspar Cassado Cello Competition.
The Israeli Chamber Project’s tours have garnered rave reviews (“These players have to be heard to be believed.” –American Record Guide; “A band of world-class soloists…in which egos dissolve and players think, breathe and play as one.” -Time Out New York) and established the ensemble as a major artistic force on both sides of the Atlantic. These tours include appearances on some of the premier chamber music series, whether in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, New York or Beijing, as well as in remote towns where access to live chamber music is extremely rare. Guest artists on ICP tours have included the Guarneri String Quartet’s Michael Tree and Peter Wiley, the Cleveland Orchestra’s Principal Flutist, Joshua Smith as well as international soloists Antje Weithaas, Liza Ferschtman and Marina Piccinini.
A strong advocate for music education, the ICP has partnered with several conservatories and educational institutions to offer lessons and masterclasses to students of all cultural and economic backgrounds, many of whom have little or no opportunity to work with internationally recognized musicians.
An important part of the Israeli Chamber Project’s mission is to expand the chamber music literature by commissioning both new works as well as new arrangements of existing works. Original commissions have included works by Lowell Liebermann, Matan Porat, Jonathan Keren, Gilad Cohen, Yohanan Chendler, Amit Gilutz and Zohar Sharon. New arrangements of works by Debussy, Ravel, Barber, Stravinsky, Schumann and Bernstein created by Yuval Shapiro, Jonathan Keren, and Sivan Magen have become a cornerstone of the ensemble’s programming.
The Israeli Chamber Project has appeared at venues including London's Wigmore Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Morgan Library & Museum, Town Hall and Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, Chamber Music Detroit, Ottawa’s Chamberfest, on tour in China and Hong Kong, and has been featured on NPR’s Performance Today and WQXR radio’s Young Artist Showcase.
Notable performances in the 2022-23 season include the ensemble’s Kennedy Center debut as well as appearances at Stanford's Bing Concert Hall, Chamber Music Detroit, and a return to Philadelphia's Kimmel Center.
Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman has garnered international attention as a sophisticated and versatile artist, consistently praised for his sensitive and intelligent musicianship, riveting stage presence, and beautiful voice. The 2019 Best Classical Solo Vocal GRAMMY® Award winner, he continues to earn acclaim for his programming and recording projects, while regularly performing on the world’s stages in opera, orchestral concerts, recital and chamber music.
In the 2022-23 season Mr. Sulayman takes part in three world premieres: he creates the title characters in Sarah Angliss and Ross Sutherland’s Giant (Aldeburgh Festival), and Wolfgang Mitterer and Sir David Poutney’s Peter Pan: the dark side (Teatro Comunale di Bolzano e Trento/Fondazione Haydn), and performs the protagonist in Matthew Ricketts and Mark Campbell’s theatrical song cycle Unruly Sun (Orchestre Classique de Montréal/21C Festival Toronto). He also debuts at Wigmore Hall in two programs of French chamber music, plays Artaserse in Riccardo Broschi’s Idaspe in a new production in Pittsburgh and returns to Stanford Live Arts Bing Concert Hall with the Israeli Chamber Project in chamber music of Barber, Hakim and Birtwistle.
Recently Mr. Sulayman made his solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall to a sold out audience, followed by the world premiere of his critically acclaimed original production, Unholy Wars, an Italian Baroque pasticcio centered around the Middle East and the Crusades, at Spoleto Festival USA. He then returned to the Aldeburgh Festival for several different programs, including his new program, Broken Branches, with guitarist Sean Shibe. Other recent season highlights include engagements at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, and Ravinia Festival, as well as with Chicago, Pittsburgh and National Symphony Orchestras, and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and leading roles with Drottningholms Slottsteater, Houston Grand Opera, Florentine Opera, New York City Opera, and Boston Lyric Opera. In future seasons he returns to Wigmore Hall and the Ravinia Festival, debuts at Opera Philadelphia, Schleswig-Holstein Festival and Boston Celebrity Series, and will premiere David T. Little’s What Belongs to You, a monodrama written for Sulayman and Alarm Will Sound based on Garth Greenwell’s acclaimed novel, directed by Mark Morris.
Mr. Sulayman won the 2019 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for his debut solo album, Songs of Orpheus (Avie Records). His second solo album, Where Only Stars Can Hear Us (Avie), a program of Schubert Lieder with fortepianist Yi-heng Yang, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart and has received international critical acclaim, including being named “Critic’s Choice” by Opera News and included in the New York Times’ Best Classical Music of 2020. His third solo album, Broken Branches, will be released by Pentatone in May, 2023. Karim has been featured on PBS Great Performances, and appeared on the second season of Dickinson on Apple TV+. In November 2016, he created a social experiment/performance art piece called I Trust You, designed to build bridges in a divided political climate. A video version of this experiment went “viral” on the internet and was honored as a prize-winner at the My Hero Film Festival. He has been invited to give talks and hold open forums with student and adult groups about inclusion, empathy, healing from racism, and activism through the arts.
Website: www.karimsulayman.com • Instagram: @thekarimsulayman
David McCarroll, the newly appointed Concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, has been described by Musik Heute as “a violinist of mature musicality and deep understanding of his repertoire whose playing is distinguished by clarity of form and line.”
David was born in Santa Rosa, California in 1986 and began studying the violin with Helen Payne Sloat at the age of 4. At 8, he attended the Crowden School of Music in Berkeley studying with Anne Crowden. When David was 13, he received an invitation to join an international group of 60 young music students at the Yehudi Menuhin School outside London where he studied for five years with Simon Fischer. David continued his studies with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston receiving a Master’s degree, and with Antje Weithaas in the Konzertexamen (Artist Diploma) program at the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin.
Winner of the 2012 European Young Concert Artists Auditions, David made his concerto debut with the London Mozart Players in 2002 and has since appeared as soloist with many orchestras including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hong Kong Sinfonietta (Christoph Poppen). He regularly performs in major concert halls such as the Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Library of Congress, Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall. Also an active chamber musician, he served from 2015 to 2022 as the violinist of the renowned Vienna Piano Trio with whom he toured and recorded extensively and is a member of the Israeli Chamber Project.
In addition to his pursuit of music, David maintains an active interest in social concerns, including the needs of those impacted by the AIDS pandemic; he is currently working on projects of the Starcross Community to help AIDS orphans in Africa. David has performed in programs encouraging world peace promoted by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and has given benefit concerts for Doctors Without Borders. With other members of his family, David has worked to get strings to young music students in Cuba where such items are very difficult to obtain.
David plays a 1761 violin made by A&J Gagliano.
Israeli violinist Kobi Malkin is making his mark both as an exciting soloist and a perceptive chamber musician. He was praised by the New York Times for his "aptly traversed palette of emotions, from languid introspection to fevered intensity with gorgeous tone and an edge-of-seat intensity". As a soloist, Malkin has appeared with the Ashdod Chamber Orchestra, the Haifa Symphony Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Jerusalem Music Academy Symphony Orchestra Haifa, New England Conservatory’s Philharmonia, Symphonette Ra’anana, the Ruse Philharmonic Orchestra, the Young Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, and Orquesta de Camara de Bellas Artes, the Saint Louis Symphony and the Chicago Philharmonic under the batons of such conductors as Ze'ev Dorman, Stanley Sperber and Hugh Wolff.
Mr. Malkin’s musicianship has been recognized by many awards, including the prestigious Ilona Kornhauser prize in the America-Israel Cultural Foundation’s Aviv Competitions, New England Conservatory’s Violin Competition, Haifa Symphony Orchestra’s Zvi Rotenberg Competition, the Canetti International Violin Competition, as well as scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, and has performed at an array of venues such as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Vienna Konzerthaus, Ruse’s Philharmonic Hall, Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
An avid chamber musician, Malkin has collaborated with Itamar Golan, Miriam Fried, Frans Helmerson, Hsin-Yun Huang, Kim Kashkashian, Alan Kay, Marcy Rosen, Roger Tapping, Mitsuko Uchida and Peter Wiley. He has performed at numerous festivals, such as Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Yellow Barn, the Perlman Music Program and the Marlboro Music Festival, and worked with notable artists such as Pamela Frank, Ivry Gitlis, Vadim Gluzman, Leonidas Kavakos, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. Malkin’s chamber performances are regularly broadcast on Israel’s classical music radio Kol HaMusika, and on WQXR and WMFT in the US. He is frequently invited as a guest concertmaster with such orchestras as the American Symphony Orchestra and the Minas Gerais Filharmonica, and was recently appointed as concertmaster of the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra.
Mr. Malkin is an alumnus of Ensemble Connect, a program of Carnegie Hall and The Juilliard School which trains the next generation of performers to be artists and teachers that hold a deep commitment to the communities in which they live and work. He holds a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Sylvia Rosenberg and Donald Weilerstein, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory, where he worked under the guidance of Miriam Fried.
Guy Ben-Ziony grew up in Israel’s scenic Jezreel Valley. At the age of nine, after seeing The Waltz King, the Walt Disney film about Johann Strauss, he wanted nothing more than to play the violin. A short time later he switched over to the viola, finding his true voice, and studied with some of Israel's leading teachers, including Chaim Taub, Gad Lewertoff, and David Chen.
After meeting renowned violist Tabea Zimmermann, he moved to Frankfurt to study with her and later continued his studies with Tatiana Masurenko at the University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig. His performance of Bartók's Viola Concerto under the direction of Daniel Harding, capped his studies there.
He has taken part in international music festivals, including the Lockenhaus Festival, the Young Artist's Festival in Davos, the Spannungen Heimbach Festival, and Prussia Cove, playing alongside artists such as Gidon Kremer, Lisa Batiashvili, Christian tetzlaff, and Menachem Pressler. He was also a member of the Denmark-based Zapolsky String Quartet and the Waldstein Ensemble Wien, performing in many of Europe’s major concert halls, including the Vienna Musikverein, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and London's Wigmore Hall London.
As a founding member of the Israeli Chamber Project he has collaborated with many of Israel's most celebrated composers and explored innovative cross-disciplinary projects in Germany, among them with the dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests.
Guy is a frequent guest leader with many of Europe's leading chamber orchestras, including the Camerata Salzburg, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Camerata Nordica, or Camerata Bern. His Debut solo CD, Monodialogue,was released in 2016 to great critical acclaim.
From 2006 until 2017 Guy was a viola professor at the University of Music and Theatre "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig. The 2017-2018 season featured him as member of the internationally-renowned Pacifica String Quartet and Visiting Professor at the Jacobs School of Music, Bloomington, Indiana.
Prize winner at the Gaspar Cassado and Enescu International Cello Competitions, cellist Michal Korman has performed as soloist with the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, The Tokyo Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Tivoli Festival Orchestra (Denmark), The Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional of Peru, Israel Camerata Jerusalem, Juilliard Chamber Orchestra, and has appeared in solo and chamber music recitals at Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Halls, Alice Tully Hall, Bargemusic, Gardner Museum, People’s Symphony, and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, among others, as well as in all of Israel’s major venues, including YMCA Jerusalem and the Red Sea Music Festival.
An avid chamber musician, Ms. Korman is a founding member of the Israeli Chamber Project with which she tours annually throughout Israel and in the US. She has participated in the Marlboro and Yellow Barn chamber music festivals, has toured with Musicians From Marlboro and participated in the Verbier Festival, Manchester International Cello Festival, and the Kfar Blum Festival to name a few. Ms. Korman has performed various concerts in live and recorded broadcasts on WQXR and Israel’s national radio and television. She has performed and toured in Europe and the US with The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra directed by Daniel Barenboim.
Born in Jerusalem, Ms. Korman is a graduate of the Artist Diploma and Master of Music programs at The Juilliard School under the guidance of Joel Krosnick and Timothy Eddy. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree magna cum laude from the Buchman-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv, studying with Hillel Zori. Prior to her academic studies she studied with Uzi Wiesel and Sabena Frankenberg and graduated from the Rubin Academy High School of Music and Dance in Jerusalem. She has been a recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarships and The Kleppel and Slatkin Scholarships.
Cited as an “exciting soloist” by the New York Times, Israeli clarinetist Tibi Cziger is a passionate soloist and a sought after chamber musician. He has performed a vast amount of chamber music and recital literature for the clarinet in concert, television, and radio broadcasts across Europe, Asia, North America and the Middle East.
Mr. Cziger is the artistic director and founder of the award-winning Israeli Chamber Project and is a member of the Israeli Contemporary Players. He is a regular participant in festivals such as Marlboro Music Festival, Musique en Brionnais, Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival and Ottawa ChamberFest.
Mr. Cziger has appeared as a soloist with the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra in Copenhagen, iPalpiti String Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall, St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, Metropolis Ensemble, Israel Contemporary Players and Israel Chamber Orchestra, and served as the principal clarinetist of the Israeli Camerata Orchestra and co-principal at the Norwegian Radio Orchestra.
Mr. Cziger is a winner of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarships and holds an Artist Diploma from the Juilliard School, a M.Mus from the University of Southern California, and a B.Mus. Magna cum laude from the Tel Aviv University. His principal mentors include Charles Neidich, Yehuda Gilad, Richard Lesser, and Itzhak Kazzap.
He serves on the faculty of the Buchman-Mehta School of Music (Tel Aviv University), the Israeli Conservatory, and the Jerusalem Music Center. Mr. Cziger is a Selmer-Paris artist. He resides in the exciting city of Tel Aviv, with his wife, cellist Michal Korman, and their children, Iyar, Noam and Ivry.
Pianist Assaff Weisman’s performances have taken him to some of the major venues in Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. These include appearances at the Rudolfinum in Prague, Beethovenhalle in Bonn, Philips Hall in The Hague, and Lincoln Center in New York. As first prize winner in the 2006 Iowa International Piano Competition, he has appeared as soloist with the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal), Sioux City Symphony, the American Chamber Orchestra, the Connecticut Valley Chamber Orchestra and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional of Peru. His radio credits include WQXR’s “Young Artist Showcase” and “The Voice of Music” in Israel, as well as multiple appearances on WGBH radio in Boston, where he has recorded repertoire ranging from Bach to André Previn.
His 2002 release of an all-Schubert recording for Yamaha’s “NYC Rising Star” series quickly became one of its best sellers. An avid chamber musician, Mr. Weisman has collaborated with Isidore Cohen, Peter Wiley, and Michael Tree, among others, and has taken part in the Aspen Music Festival, Campos do Jordão (Brazil), Lima Chamber Music Festival (Peru), The Music Festival of the Hamptons, and Verbier (Switzerland). He is a founding member, and the Executive Director of the award-winning Israeli Chamber Project, with which he has toured since 2008.
Mr. Weisman is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he received both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees as a student of Herbert Stessin, and where he now is a member of the Evening Division piano faculty. Prior to his studies in New York, he studied with Professor Victor Derevianko in Israel where he was a winner of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarships. Mr. Weisman is a Yamaha Artist.
Upcoming Events
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
Fri, March 17 at 7:30 PM | Bing Concert Hall
The Queen's Cartoonists
Sun, March 19 at 2:30 PM | Bing Concert Hall