Gigi Yellen-Kohn JTNews Correspondent
Yaniv is not an uncommon name in Israel. Like all Hebrew names, it has a deeper meaning tucked inside.
“It means to bear, as a tree bears fruit,” says Maestro Yaniv Attar from his new home in Bellingham. Now in his first season as music director of the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra, the Israeli-born conductor adds, “Hopefully, I’m bringing wonderful fruit!” He means the fruit of his years of study and apprenticeship in Israel, England and the United States, first as a classical guitarist and now as a conductor.
Attar, who turns 35 on Purim this year, was born in Ashdod. At the age of 15, he moved to Jerusalem to study at the Rubin Academy of Music, the top training institution for classical musicians in Israel, where his teacher was the celebrated Irit Even-Tov.
“Guitar is pretty big in Israel,” he says. “A lot of classical guitarists go study abroad and return.”
Like most professional musicians, Attar started his education at a young age.
“My mother bought me a guitar as a kid,” he says. “She jokes that if she knew I was going to take it so seriously she might have thought twice about it.”
At his first or second lesson, he watched his teacher playing Bach. “I was determined to learn that piece,” he adds.
At 18, he was accepted into London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Music (where he shared a master class with a postgrad student named Ludovic Morlot, now music director of Seattle Symphony). He moved to New York and earned a master’s in guitar at the Juilliard School, where the legendary American guitarist Sharon Isbin was his mentor. By happy coincidence, when the Whatcom Symphony brought Attar out to conduct one concert as an audition last season, Isbin was the scheduled soloist.
But Attar dropped plans to pursue a career as a solo guitarist when he got what he calls “the conducting bug.” Back in Israel, he studied privately with Leonard Bernstein’s former assistant, Israel Edelson. Edelson advised him to enroll at McGill University in Montreal, where he would earn a master’s in conducting from Alexis Hauser.
“Until today he’s my mentor, in music and career, like a second father,” Attar says of the Austrian-born Hauser, whose conducting career was, in turn, mentored by the 20th-century master Hans Swarowsky.
With wife Meredith, an elementary school teacher, and son Jonah, who’s almost 4, Maestro Attar comes to Bellingham after serving in Birmingham, Alabama, as assistant conductor of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.
“It’s good to live in a small community,” says Attar, pleased with his Jewish experiences in both Birmingham and Bellingham. He says he and his family are now active members of Congregation Beth Israel, where he occasionally plays guitar.
Enthusiastic about his new post with the 39-year-old resident orchestra of the historic Mount Baker Theatre in downtown Bellingham, Attar jokingly complains, “We have one problem: all our concerts are just about sold out!”
He is especially looking forward to conducting the season finale, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on Sunday, May 4. His mother is coming from Israel for the occasion, which builds on a treasured piece of family history.
“When I was a teenager, my sister was at Tel Aviv University, studying film. For an assignment, she had to study “˜A Clockwork Orange,’ which as you know, uses the Beethoven 9th a great deal in the soundtrack. When I heard it, I took my mom’s record of it, and I think I destroyed it,” he recalls of the vulnerable vinyl disc. “I played it over and over and over, and even though I was a guitarist, the 9th became very important to me. This is the first time I’m conducting it!”
In addition to the May 4 concert, the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra plays on Sunday afternoon, March 30, featuring duo pianos in an all-French program. Although the coming season is still under wraps, Attar says he’s involved in planning for the orchestra’s 40th anniversary, including a commissioned piece, in the 2015-16 season.