Ganador del Premio Avery Fisher, Gil Shaham es uno de los violinistas más destacados de nuestro tiempo, cuya combinación de una técnica impecable con una inimitable calidez y generosidad de espíritu ha solidificado su legado como un maestro americano. Nombrado “Instrumentista del Año” por la revista Musical America, es reclamado para actuar en todo el mundo con las principales orquestas y directores, y ofrece con asiduidad recitales y música de cámara en los grandes escenarios de conciertos y en los más prestigiosos festivales.
La nueva temporada trae a Shaham de regreso a una de sus obras más emblemáticas, repitiendo su "actuación brillante, casi en éxtasis" (Los Angeles Times) del Concierto para violín de Korngold con Zubin Mehta y la Filarmónica de Viena en el Carnegie Hall, además de actuaciones con la Orquesta de Cleveland durante su residencia anual en Miami; John Adams y la Sinfónica de Houston; James Conlon y la National Symphony, las orquestas sinfónicas de St. Louis y Austin y la Orchestre de Paris. Asimismo prosigue con su exploración a largo plazo de los “Los conciertos para violín de los años 30” –calificada por el Musical America como "uno de los conceptos de programación más imaginativos en años"- dentro de una quinta temporada, con las interpretaciones del Segundo concierto de Bartók junto a las orquestas sinfónicas de Los Ángeles y Atlanta, el Segundo concierto de Prokofiev con Michael Tilson Thomas y la Sinfónica de San Francisco, Barber con la Filarmónica de Louisiana y la Sinfónica Nacional de México y Berg con la Sinfónica de la Radio de Berlín y la Sinfónica de la Radio Bávara en Múnich, París y en el Carnegie Hall. Con las orquestas sinfónicas de Detroit, Singapur y la BBC de Londres, Shaham ofrece los estrenos mundiales, en Asia y en Europa de un nuevo concierto del compositor Bright Sheng. Otras próximas colaboraciones orquestales incluyen fechas con su viejo amigo y compañero musical John Williams junto a la Sinfónica de Chicago. A la espera de su próximo proyecto discográfico, el experto violinista regresa a las Sonatas y Partitas de Bach para violín solo, llevando su singular enfoque de estas amadas obras a Baltimore, Cleveland, Florencia y Roma.
En la temporada 2012/13 Gil estrenó la obra Nigunim para violín y piano, del compositor israelí Avner Dorman. Dicha obra es la pieza central de “Nigunim: melodías hebreas”, un nuevo álbum que Shaham grabó con su hermana -la pianista Orli Shaham- y editó en su propio sello Canary Classics en junio de 2013. Según el Buffalo News, "el virtuosismo de Shaham en este disco es de tal extravagancia pirotécnica y ferocidad y su apasionada belleza tan cálida que promete convertirse en una de las grabaciones más destacadas de la larga carrera de Shaham y uno de las mejores grabaciones intimistas de violín que probablemente nadie escuche en mucho tiempo”. “Los Shaham lograr abrumadora alturas de expresividad", dijo la revista Strad. "Estamos ante una grabación amorosamente producida y presentada de una música de belleza inquietante”.
Gil Shaham ya cuenta con más de dos docenas de discos de conciertos y solista a sus espaldas, entre ellos superventas que han aparecido en las listas de éxitos de Estados Unidos y el extranjero. Estas grabaciones han ganado prestigiosos premios, incluyendo varios premios Grammy, un Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d'Or, y el Editor’s Choice de Gramophone. Sus últimas grabaciones se editan en su sello Canary Classics, que fundó en 2004. Incluyen los Conciertos para violín de Haydn y el Octeto de Mendelssohn con los Solistas de Sejong; Sarasate: obras para violín virtuoso junto a Adele Anthony, Akira Eguchi y la Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León; el Concierto para violín de Elgar con la
Orquesta Sinfónica de Chicago y David Zinman; The Butterfly Lovers y el Concierto para violín de Tchaikovsky con la Sinfónica de Singapur; el Trío para piano de Tchaikovsky con Yefim Bronfman y Truls Mørk; The Prokofiev Album y Mozart in Paris, ambos con Orli Shaham y The Fauré Album con Akira Eguchi y Brinton Smith. Sus próximas grabaciones incluyen la integral para violín solo de Bach y varias partes del proyecto “Los conciertos para violín de los años 30”.
Gil Shaham nació en Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, en 1971. Se trasladó con sus padres a Israel, donde comenzó sus estudios de violín con Samuel Bernstein de la Academia Rubin de Música a la edad de siete años, recibiendo becas anuales de la Fundación Cultural América-Israel. En 1981, mientras estudiaba con Haim Taub en Jerusalén, debutó con la Sinfónica de Jerusalén y con la Filarmónica de Israel. Ese mismo año comenzó a estudiar con Dorothy DeLay y Jens Ellermann en Aspen. En 1982, tras obtener el Primer Premio en el Concurso Claremont de Israel, consiguió una beca para estudiar en Juilliard, donde trabajó con DeLay y Hyo Kang. También estudió en la Universidad de Columbia.
En 1990 recibió la prestigiosa beca Avery Fisher Career, y en 2008 recibió el codiciado Premio Avery Fisher. En 2012, fue nombrado "Instrumentista del Año" por la revista Musical America, que mencionó la “especial forma de humanismo" que impregna sus actuaciones.
Shaham toca el Stradivarius “Condesa de Polignac" de 1699 y vive en la ciudad de Nueva York con su esposa, la violinista Adele Anthony, y sus tres hijos.
“The outstanding American violinist of his generation.” – Time
Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time: his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy Award-winner, also named Musical America’s “Instrumentalist of the Year,” is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.
Shaham headlines a Parisian-themed opening-night gala with the Seattle Symphony this fall, launching a new season that sees him rejoin the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas for Mozart’s “Turkish” concerto, and, on the orchestra’s 20th-anniversary tour, for Prokofiev’s Second at venues including Carnegie Hall. The Prokofiev also serves as the vehicle for his collaboration with The Knights at the Caramoor Fall Festival, and is one of the works showcased in his long-term exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s.” Now entering its sixth season, this project takes him back to the Philadelphia Orchestra for Berg’s concerto, and to both the Berlin Radio Symphony and the London Symphony Orchestra for Britten. Besides giving the world premiere performances of a new concerto by David Bruce with the San Diego Symphony, the violinist’s upcoming orchestral highlights also include Mendelssohn in Tokyo, Canada, and Luxembourg, and two Bach concertos with the Dallas Symphony. In recital, he presents Bach’s complete solo sonatas and partitas at Chicago’s Symphony Center, L.A.’s Disney Hall, and other venues in a special multimedia collaboration with photographer and video artist David Michalek.
Last season saw the release of 1930s Violin Concertos (Vol. 1), the first double album to be yielded by Shaham’s long-term programming project, which was recorded live with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, BBC Symphony, Staatskapelle Dresden, and Sejong. In live performance, he played 1930s concertos by Bartók, Prokofiev, Barber, Berg, and Britten with such eminent ensembles as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony, and Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA, which he joined as guest soloist on its inaugural national tour. Among his other orchestral collaborations, Shaham reprised Korngold’s concerto, of which he has long been recognized as one of the foremost exponents, with the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall and with orchestras including the National Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and France’s Orchestre de Paris, as well as giving the world, Asian, and European premieres of a new concerto by Bright Sheng. Shaham also gave his signature recitals of unaccompanied Bach in Baltimore, Cleveland, and on tour in Italy.
Gil Shaham already has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, including bestsellers that have ascended the record charts in the U.S. and abroad. These recordings have earned prestigious awards, including 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. They comprise Haydn Violin Concertos and Mendelssohn’s Octet with the Sejong Soloists; Sarasate: Virtuoso Violin Works with Adele Anthony, Akira Eguchi, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León; Elgar’s Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and David Zinman; The Butterfly Lovers and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Singapore Symphony; Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A with Yefim Bronfman and cellist Truls Mork; The Prokofiev Album and Mozart in Paris, both with his sister, pianist Orli Shaham; The Fauré Album with Akira Eguchi and cellist Brinton Smith; and Nigunim: Hebrew Melodies, also recorded with Orli Shaham, which features the world premiere recording of a sonata written for the violinist by Avner Dorman. Upcoming titles include Bach’s complete works for solo violin.
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, where he worked with DeLay and Hyo Kang. He also studied at Columbia University.
Gil 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, which cited the “special kind of humanism” with which his performances are imbued. He plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius, and lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.
Fuente: gilshaham.com
- BACH SONATAS AND PARTITAS FOR SOLO VIOLIN
“It’s hardly news that Shaham is an impeccable violinist, one capable of bringing out the mechanics and the majesty of Bach in equal measure. Still, it was great to be startled all over again by the brilliance of his playing, the penetrating power of his interpretations…Shaham produced a clear and beautifully focused tone, even in the busiest passages. Intonation, despite the hothouse environment, held firm. Above all, he offered remarkable subtleties of expression.”
- Tim Smith, Baltimore Sun, February 24, 2014
“Shaham’s Bach, a jaunty, excitable rendition of the E Major Partita, captured the vigor and raffish charm of his best work.”
- Joshua Kosman, SF Gate, February 17, 2013
- WITH THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
“Either way, this was a performance of engaged eloquence and powerful expressivity that explored the darkness within the score and its hints of both insecurity and aggression. Shaham was technically impeccable, also drawing on an ample range of colour and articulation to encompass the music’s needs while being consistently vividly supported by Vänskä and the LSO players.”
- George Hall, The Guardian, April 14, 2015 - WITH THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC
“A ravishing account with Gil Shaham of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s sumptuous Violin Concerto prompted a playful encore, Kreisler’s “Schön Rosmarin,” played by Mr. Shaham and the orchestra.”
- Steve Smith, New York Times, March 17, 2014 - WITH THE BAVARIAN RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
“Then the violinist Gil Shaham was the soloist for a rapturous, powerful performance of Berg’s great Violin Concerto, written in 1935 and dedicated to ‘the memory of an angel.’… Mr. Shaham played the technically daunting violin part of this two-movement concerto with command, clarity and melting sound. He and the inspired orchestra brought richness and majesty even to the wrenching, torturous first half of the second movement. The performance conveyed the state of uneasy peace and solemn resignation that arrives when Berg folds a harmonically daring, strangely consoling Bach chorale into the long, final episode of the piece.”
- Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, May 19, 2014 - WITH THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA
“The centerpiece of the Blossom concert was an appearance by violinist Gil Shaham, who played Beethoven’s magisterial concerto.
Shaham brought to the Blossom stage not only his supreme artistry, but also a style of playing that stretches back, through Itzhak Perlman, Jascha Heifetz and Nathan Milstein, to the great Hungarian virtuoso and pedagogue Leopold Auer. Artistic and technical mastery, expressed with a tone that can only be described as silk and steel, is the hallmark of Shaham’s playing, and it was in ample supply Saturday night.”
- Mark Satola, Cleveland.com, July 30, 2012 - WITH THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA
“Mr. Shaham was at home in this music, grooving on the sounds made by the first violins when he wasn’t playing, and spinning sweet melodies over the rich orchestral texture. The violinist brought athleticism and musicianship to the vast musical arches of the opening movement.”
- Paul Pelkonen, Superconductor, May 24, 2012“Gil Shaham was certainly, like Bronfman, in the rarefied aeries of serious music. Yet might have expected a value-conscious New Yorker to complain that Bronfman used 88 strings, while Shaham was performing on a measly four (or eight, if you count double-stopping). But once they heard those heavenly tones emitted from Mr. Shaham’s 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius, all doubts would have faded into the Carnegie Hall spaces.”
- Harry Rolnick, Concertonet.com, May 23, 2012“Shaham plunged in with thrilling confidence and uncommon clarity in terms of accuracy, tone and character. With a burnished, concentrated timbre, he conveyed almost shy sweetness; fierce determination and grit in brutal confrontation with the orchestra; and a plaintive whisper.”
- Ronni Reich, NJ.com, April 30, 2012“Is there a more sunny and less ego-driven violinist than Israeli-born Gil Shaham? He makes even the most virtuosic music seem so effortless and natural, it’s easy to forget how rare and difficult an achievement that is.”
- Raphael Mostel, The Jewish Daily Forward, April 16, 2012“Shaham is an engaging and wonderfully skillful performer. A hint of shyness or reticence added to the allure of his onstage persona (though no player of his level is a wallflower). At the end, I realized I had encountered a goose-bump experience — an event to remember.”
- Charles Ward, Houston Chronicle, February 4, 2012
1930s Violin Concertos, Vol. 2
February 26, 2016
Music to Drive Away Loiterers
2014
Nigunim: Hebrew Melodies
2013
Haydn Violin Concertos Mendelssohn Octet
Gil Shaham and Sejongs Soloists performing the Mendelssohn Octet.
2010
Edward Elgar Violin Concerto in B Minor, Op. 61
The Elgar Violin Concerto, recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
2008
Gabriel Fauré The Fauré Album
Sonata No.1 in A major for violin & piano, Op.13
2007
Schubert for Two
2002
Williams: Violin Concerto; TreeSong; Three Pieces from Schindler’s List
2001
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
2000
American Scenes: Copland: Violin Sonata / Nocturne; Previn: Violin Sonata ‘Vineyard'; Gershwin: 3 Preludes; Barber: Canzone
1998
The Fiddler Of The Opera
1997
Violin Romances
1996
Korngold & Barber Violin Concertos: Korngold: Violin Concerto / Much Ado about Nothing; Barber: Violin Concerto
1994
Sibelius & Tchaikovsky: Violin Concertos
1993
Saint-Saëns & Paganini Violin Concertos: Saint-Saëns: Violin Concerto No.3 ; Paganini: Violin Concerto No.1
1992
Mendelssohn & Bruch: Violin Concertos
Renaud Capuçon, Jerome Ducros
1990
Bach: Sonatas and Partitas
2015
1930s Violin Concertos, Vol. 1
2014
Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa / Fratres / Symphony No.3
2012
Prokofiev: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
2012
Pablo de Sarasate Virtuoso Works For Violin
2009
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Piano Trio in A minor, Op 50
2008
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Six Sonatas
2007
Brahms: Violin Concerto – Double Concerto
2002
Gil Shaham & Jonathan Feldman – The Devil’s Dance
2000
Bartók: Violin Concerto No.2 / Rhapsodies Nos. 1 & 2
1999
Glazunov & Kabelevsky: Violin Concertos
1998
Dvorák for Two: Violin Sonata Op.57 / Sonatina Op.100 / 4 Romantic Pieces Op.75
1997
Vivaldi & Kreisler Violin Concertos: Kreisler: Concerto in C / Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
1995
Paganini for Two
1994
Wieniawski: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
1992
Franck: Violinsonate in A major; Saint-Saëns: Violinsonate op. 75; Ravel: Tzigane
1991
Más en su web oficial: gilshaham.com
1930’S VIOLIN CONCERTOS VOL. 2 TRAILER
1930’S VIOLIN CONCERTOS VOL. 1 TRAILER
NPR MUSIC FIELD RECORDINGS: GIL SHAHAM’S DAY AT THE MUSEUM
GIL SHAHAM, CLAUDIO ABBADO AND THE BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER – BRAHMS’ VIOLIN CONCERTO
GIL SHAHAM PLAYS SOLO BACH IN JAPAN
GIL SHAHAM – PROKOFIEV VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 2 (1ST MOVEMENT)