Carmit Zori’s talent brought her to the attention of the late renowned musician Isaac Stern. It was he who made it possible for the 15-year-old Israeli violinist to study in the United States, where she has built an outstanding career. Zori graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music, soloed with the New York Philharmonic and with orchestras across the globe, and in 2002, founded the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society. She is one of five Israeli-born musicians performing in the concerts of the 2005 summer festival of the Seattle Chamber Music Society.
This year, for the first time, the society has added five additional concerts on the campus of The Overlake School on the Eastside in August, to complement their 12 concerts on the campus of Lakeside School in north Seattle in July. Classical music radio station KING-FM (98.1) broadcasts live from the July concerts. The August concerts will be recorded for later broadcast.
Along with Zori, Israeli-born artists on this year’s roster include pianist Yael Weiss, who, like Zori, returns for her second season in Seattle, and three newcomers to the festival: pianists Shai Wosner and Alon Goldstein, and cellist Amit Peled.
Yael Weiss hails from Bat-Yam, the same Tel Aviv suburb that gave the world Yitzhak Perlman. Currently on the faculty of University of California at Santa Barbara, Weiss is a founding member of the piano trio Sequenza, which was chosen for the 2003 Best of St. Paul Sunday CD.
Amit Peled was born and raised on Kibbutz Yizreel. Like Alon Goldstein, he was a winner of Israel’s prestigious Francois Shapira competition. Peled joined the violinist Midori in a gala concert for the America-Israel Cultural Foundation at Lincoln Center in New York. Currently he is one of the youngest cello professors in the United States. He is on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, M.D.
Alon Goldstein studied at the Rubin Academy of Arts at Tel Aviv University, served in the Israeli Army as an outstanding musician, and is a 10-time recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship. He had already soloed with the Israel Philharmonic by the time he came to the United States to study with Leon Fleischer at the Peabody Conservatory. Goldstein also received the State of Israel Culture and Arts prize for the best solo performance of a work by an Israeli composer.
Shai Wosner was awarded a 2005 Avery Fisher Career Grant. He has performed as a member of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two. Seattle radio audiences first heard Wosner’s performances on KING-FM’s broadcasts of the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival last fall. Wosner, who currently lives in New York, not only began his piano studies in his native Israel, but also studied composition, theory and improvisation there with Andre Hajdu. He is an enthusiastic advocate for new music.
Seattle Chamber Music Society festival concerts include at least one of these artists performing in almost every concert during July. In addition to the regular concerts of the season, the festival includes two events of special interest to families with young musicians, or musicians-to-be: an emerging artist’s concert, and a family concert, at both the Lakeside and Overlake campuses.