Sunday, October 20, 3:00 pm. Musicians from The Israeli Chamber Project
“Masters of their Craft”
Concert Program:
Jörg Widmann Selections from Duos for Violin and Cello
Robert Schumann Sonata for Violin and Piano in D minor, Op. 121
Maurice Ravel Piano Trio in A minor
Violinist Carmit Zori and pianist Assaff Weisman are joined by guest cellist Raman Ramakrishnan. Schumann, Ravel, and Widmann, working in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, created unique and unmistakeable musical languages through colors and textures all their own.
This concert is sponsored in part by a generous grant from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation.
About the Artists:
Cellist Raman Ramakrishnan enjoys performing chamber music, old and new, around the world. For two decades, as a founding member of the Horszowski Trio and the Daedalus Quartet, he toured extensively through North and South America, Europe, and Asia. He recorded for Bridge Records and Avie Records, including the complete piano trios of Robert Schumann and the complete string quartets of Fred Lerdahl. Mr. Ramakrishnan is currently an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and is on the faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
Mr. Ramakrishnan has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. He has performed at Caramoor, at Bargemusic, with the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and at the Aspen, Bard, Charlottesville, Four Seasons, Kingston, Lincolnshire (UK), Marlboro, Mehli Mehta (India), Oklahoma Mozart, Portland, Skaneateles, and Vail Music Festivals. Ramakrishnan has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed, as guest principal cellist, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a guest member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, he has performed in New Delhi and Agra, India and in Cairo, Egypt. He has served on the faculties of the Kneisel Hall, Norfolk, and Taconic Chamber Music Festivals, as well as in the Music Performance Program of Columbia University.
Mr. Ramakrishnan was born in Athens, Ohio and grew up in East Patchogue, New York. His father is a molecular biologist and his mother is the children’s book author and illustrator Vera Rosenberry. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and a Master’s degree in music from The Juilliard School. His principal teachers have been Fred Sherry, Andrés Díaz, and André Emelianoff. He lives in New York City with his wife, the violist Melissa Reardon, and their son. He plays a Neapolitan cello made by Vincenzo Jorio in 1837.
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. He 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). Weisman 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.
Violinist Carmit Zori is the recipient of a Leventritt Foundation Award, a Pro Musicis International Award, and the top prize in the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition. She has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among many others. She has given solo recitals at Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., the Tel Aviv Museum, and the Jerusalem Center for the Performing Arts.
Her performances have taken her throughout Latin America and Europe, as well as Israel, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia, where she premiered the Violin Concerto by Marc Neikrug. In addition to her appearances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Ms. Zori has been a guest at chamber music festivals and concert series around the world, including the Chamber Music at the Y series in New York City, Festival Casals in Puerto Rico, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, the Bard Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Bach Dancing and Dynamite chamber music festival in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont.
After hearing the fifteen-year-old Ms. Zori, Isaac Stern arranged for her to come to the United States from her native Israel to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where her teachers included Ivan Galamian, Jaime Laredo, and Arnold Steinhardt.
Ms. Zori, who for ten years was an artistic director at Bargemusic, founded the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society in 2002. She has recorded on the Arabesque, Koch International, and Elektra-Nonesuch labels. She is professor of violin at Rutgers University and at SUNY Purchase, where she also serves on the chamber music faculty.
About the Israeli Chamber Project
Now in its second decade, the Israeli Chamber Project is a dynamic ensemble comprising strings, winds, harp, and piano, bringing 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 the 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 concertgoers 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 in order 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, The Clark Memorial Library at UCLA, 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 2023-24 season include the ensemble’s first collaboration with the preeminent violist Tabea Zimmermann, as well as the world premiere of a new Gity Razaz commission written for the ensemble and tenor Karim Sulayman.
Meet the Israeli Chamber Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw6re_5mmgk