Grammy-award winning violinist Gil Shaham will perform Tchaikovsky’s “Concerto in D major, Op. 35,” considered one of the best known and yet most difficult of all violin concertos, with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra on Friday, Jan. 12 at 7:30 p.m.
The concert also will include Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy,” Glazunov’s “Ouverture solennelle, Op. 73”, and Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise.”
Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1971. He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at the age of seven, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, while studying with Haim Taub in Jerusalem, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic. That same year he began his studies with Dorothy DeLay and Jens Ellermann at Aspen. In 1982, after taking first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition, he became a scholarship student at Juilliard. He also studied at Columbia University.
Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008 he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America. He is sought after worldwide for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors. He has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name. These recordings have earned multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. His recent recordings are issued on the Canary Classics label, which he founded in 2004. Among them is “Nigunim: Hebrew Melodies,” recorded with his sister, pianist Orli Shaham.
Shaham plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius, and lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.
For ticket information visit tucsonsymphony.org or call 882-8585.
