Yehonatan Berick - violin
In high demand internationally since becoming a prizewinner at the 1993 Naumburg Violin Competition, YEHONATAN BERICK enjoys a busy concert schedule as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and pedagogue, throughout North America, Europe and Israel.
Berick has performed, among others, with the Quebec, Winnipeg, Windsor, Ann Arbor, Jerusalem and Haifa Symphonies, the Israeli, Cincinnati, Montreal and Manitoba Chamber Orchestras, Thirteen Strings and Ensemble Appassionata.
Berick's many recital programs feature one-day performances of such cycles as Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas, Paganini’s 24 Caprices, Ysaÿe's Six Solo Sonatas, as well as complete Sonata cycles by Brahms, Beethoven, Schumann, and Grieg.
He has collaborated with many world renowned artists, including pianists Menahem Pressler, James Tocco, Gilbert Kalish, and Awadagin Pratt; violists Michael Tree, Paul Neubauer and Kim Kashkashian; cellists David Soyer, Peter Wiley, Stephen Isserlis, David Finckel, Michel Strauss, and Yehuda Hanani, clarinetists Wolfgang Meyer and James Campbell, flutist Julius Baker, and many others from a long list of internationally renowned artists.
Berick's many festival and chamber series’ credits include Marlboro, Ravinia, Seattle, Vancouver, Ottawa, Jerusalem, El Paso, Maui, Domaine Forget (Canada), Great Lakes (Michigan), Close Encounters with Music (Great Barrington, MA), Giverny (France), Leicester (U.K.), Moritzburg (Germany), Lapland (Sweden), Riihimaki (Finland), Strings in the Mountains (Colorado), Alpenglow (Colorado), ChamberFest Cleveland, Four seasons (N. Carolina), Agassiz (Winnipeg), Kfar Blum (Israel), Killington (Vermont), and Bowdoin (Maine).
Berick is currently a member of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet. He previously held the position of co-artistic director of the Quebec Chamber Music Society. Touring as a chamber musician with Musicians from Marlboro, The Lortie-Berick-Lysy Piano Trio, the Huberman String Quartet, Concertante Chamber Players, The Walden Chamber Players, and other chamber ensembles, he has been featured in the world's most important music centers: in Europe (London's Wigmore Hall, Paris's Musee du Louvre, Milan's Sala Verdi), the US (New York's Carnegie Hall and Metropolitan Museum, Washington's Kennedy Center, Freer Gallery and the Phillips Collection) and Canada (Toronto's Glenn Gould Studio and St. Lawrence Centre, North York's Ford Centre and Quebec City's Grand Theatre and Palais Montcalm).
Berick's Paganini: 24 Caprices is now available on Equilibrium label. On CD, Berick has recorded for the Acoma, Albany, Centaur, Equilibrium, XXI-21, Gasparo, Summit, and Helicon labels. His recording with the Amici ensemble, entitled Contrasts, has won rave reviews in the Canadian press. Other CD features include the Grand Concert for violin, pianoand string quartet by Chausson; The Complete Bartok and Berio Violin Duos; Chamber Music by Paul Ben Haim; The Impossible Dream by Gerhard Samuel ; and Mordechai Seter's unaccompanied violin sonata. Many of his concerts are broadcast on Radio and TV in Canada, Europe and Israel.
As a teacher, Berick is equally sought after as violin teacher and chamber music mentor. Prior to his current appointment as Professor of Violin at the University of Ottawa and Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto, he served on the faculties of the University of Michigan, McGill University, as well as the Eastman School of Music. He has been invited as teacher and artist-in-residence at Bowdoin Music Festival (Maine), Killington Music Festival (Vermont), The Shouse Institute (MI), The Beethoven Seminar (New York), Music@Menlo (CA), Keshet Eilon, Sounds in the Valley, and the JMC Young Players' Unit (Israel), and has been featured in masterclasses worldwide. Many of his students hold positions in leading orchestras, ensembles, and universities.
Yehonatan Berick started his musical education at the age of six. Having graduated from highschool at 16, he entered the Tel Aviv University's Music Academy, and completed his studies at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, earning a full tuition and a Summa cum Lauda. His principal violin teachers were Ilona Feher, Henry Meyer, Kurt Sassmanshauss, Dorothy Delay, and Yair Kless. He had theory teachings with composer Sergiu Natra, and attended masterclasses with such artists as Isaac Stern, Henryk Szeryng, Max Rostal and Josef Gingold. One of the brightest talents of Israel, Berick won several Clairemont Awards, and received yearly stipends from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.
Yehonatan Berick is currently performing on a 1761 violin by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi, generously on loan from the University of Ottawa, as well as on a violin by Honoré Derazey Père from 1852, and on a viola by Stanley Kiernoziak from 2003.