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Ittai Shapira (born December 18, 1972) is an Israeli-American violinist, composer, and curator. His compositions include Concierto Latino, a concerto for Solo Violin, and seven Double Concertos. He is the founder and artistic director of Sound Potential, Inc., [1] an artistic consultant for the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program, [2] and is co-founder of the Ilona Feher Foundation [3] with violinist Hagai Shaham.
Ittai Shapira was born in Rochester, NY, but grew up in Israel. He first studied with Rima Kaminkovsky, and later with Ilona Fehér. He continued his studies with Dorothy DeLay, Robert Mann [4] graduating from the Juilliard School class of 94. [5]
Engagements include performances with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic under Sir Neville Marriner, Cape Town Philharmonic, Czech National Symphony under Libor Pešek, Detroit Symphony under Yoel Levi, English Chamber Orchestra with Yuri Bashmet at the Barbican Centre, Israel Chamber Orchestra, Israeli Virtuosi at Alice Tully Hall, hosted by Itzhak Perlman, the Philharmonia, Polish Chamber Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Russian Philharmonic with Thomas Sanderling, and the Symphony Orchestras of Budapest, Harrisburg, Jerusalem, Omaha and Shanghai. [4]
Ittai Shapira made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2003 [6] with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, performing the world premiere of the Violin Concerto written for him [7] by compatriot Shulamit Ran. His live recording of this concerto is featured in a compilation of Shulamit Ran's works, performed by Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He returned to the stage as a soloist, with the American Symphony, and Glenn Close. [8]
Other performances include a tour of Finland and Sweden with the Oulu Sinfonia, a tour of Shapira's Violin Concertos Concierto Latino, with the Key West Symphony, and The Old Man and the Sea with The Knights.
He continues to tour as a soloist, with his own compositions, with orchestras in Austria, Brazil and the United States.
Ittai Shapira's first composition was a concerto for Solo Violin, Concierto Latino, recorded in 2011 by the London Serenata under the baton of Krzysztof Chorzelski. [9]
He went on to compose seven Concertos:
He is also the creator of a set of Solo Violin Caprices.
Ittai Shapira's discography [18] of over 20 CD's (for labels including Champs Hill Records, [19] EMI, Meridian Records, Sanctuary Classics, Quartz and Sony/BMG) includes both standard and contemporary repertoire. [20] Shapira's playing is featured in the soundtrack of a film made about Daniel Pearl, The Journalist and the Jihadi, and a children's project with Brooke Shields, The Runaway Bunny. The performance was hosted by Larry King and reached an audience of 55 million on the Jerry Lewis Telethon, and was nationally televised in the US.
Fourteen concertos have been dedicated [21] to him by composers such as Avner Dorman [22] and Dave Heath, the most recent being the Katrina Violin Concerto by Theodore Wiprud. [23] He has recently premiered a Violin and Mandolin [24] Concerto with Avi Avital, Tikkun Olam composed by Ariel Blumenthal [25] and conducted by Florin Parvulescu, a project he curated as a soloist in a joint project between the San Francisco Symphony and Conservatory.
A recipient of the Clairmont Award, he has served as Classical Advisor at Molloy College and the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program, and has given concert lectures about Music and the Brain at the University of Cambridge (UK), Mount Sinai Hospital, and New York University. He has also given a concert lecture about the healing potential of music at One to One Global Forum, co-sponsored by the UN Foundation and Chabbad.
He was selected to be the first Affiliate at the Royal College of Music in London.
He is a recipient of the Victor Herbert Foundation award [26] in recognition of his projects as Soloist, Composer and Curator.
Ittai Shapira co-founded the Ilona Feher Foundation [27] with violinist Hagai Shaham. The foundation is dedicated to the nurturing and promotion of young Israeli violinists. [28]
Shapira performs regularly for charitable causes, sharing the stage with performers such as Sandy Duncan, Cady Huffman, Donna McKechnie and Martin Short.
He is the founder and Artistic Director of Sound Potential, [29] Inc., a non profit foundation dedicated to medical, educational, and societal healing through music. [30]
Ittai Shapira plays a 1745 Guadagnini Violin. [31]
Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist. He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in 2007, and at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. He has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perlman has won 16 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmy Awards.
James Ehnes, is a Canadian concert violinist and violist.
Shlomo Mintz is a Russian-born Israeli violinist and conductor. He regularly appears with orchestras and conductors on the international scene and is heard in recitals and chamber music concerts around the world.
Gil Shaham is an American violinist. His accolades include a Grammy Award in 1999, and he has performed as a soloist with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Russian National Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and the Orchestre de Paris.
Hagai Shaham is an Israeli violin virtuoso. He began studying the violin at the age of six and was the last student of the late Professor Ilona Feher. He is also a violin teacher, a professor at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, in the Faculty of Arts at Tel Aviv University, and an artist-in-residence at Stony Brook University.
Ilona Feher or Ilona Fehér, was one of the representatives of the Hungarian Violin School whose greats are: Joseph Böhm, Joseph Joachim, Jakob Grün, Leopold Auer, Jenő Hubay, Carl Flesch, Joseph Szigeti, Tibor Varga, Sandor Vegh, André Gertler, Kato Havas, Paul Rolland, Geza Szilvay, etc. She was also a noted violin teacher. She was born in Budapest and died in Holon, Israel.
The Ilona Feher Foundation was established in 2003 as a nonprofit organization committed to nurturing the artistic development of exceptional young Israeli violinists. The foundation honors the late violin pedagogue Ilona Feher (1901–1988) whose guidance helped shape some of Israel's greatest violinists, notable Pinchas Zukerman, Shlomo Mintz, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Hagai Shaham and Ittai Shapira.
Cho-Liang Lin is a Taiwanese-American violinist who is renowned for his appearances as a soloist with major orchestras. Musical America named him its "Instrumentalist of the Year" in 2000. He founded the Taipei International Music Festival in 1997, the largest classical music festival in the history of Taiwan, performing to an indoor audience of over 53,000 and the Taipei Music Academy & Festival in 2019, a summer music festival.
Rinat Shaham is an Israeli born mezzo-soprano who has received numerous accolades for her international operatic, concert and recital performances.
Leonidas Kavakos is a Greek violinist and conductor. He has won several international violin competition prizes, including the Sibelius, Paganini, Naumburg, and Indianapolis competitions. He is an Onassis Foundation scholar. He has also recorded for record labels such as Sony/BMG and BIS. As a conductor, he was an artistic director of the Camerata Salzburg and has been a guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Arnon Erez' is an acclaimed Israeli pianist and chamber musician, and a piano professor at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, in the Faculty of Arts at Tel Aviv University.
Orli Shaham is an American pianist, born in Jerusalem, Israel, the daughter of scientists Meira Shaham (née Diskin) and Jacob Shaham. Her brothers are the violinist Gil Shaham and Shai Shaham, who is the head of the Laboratory of Developmental Genetics at Rockefeller University.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold composed his Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, in 1945.
Shmuel Ashkenasi is an Israeli violinist and teacher.
Ralph Henry Kirshbaum is an American cellist. His award-winning career combines the worlds of solo performance, chamber music, recording and pedagogy.
Jian Wang is a Chinese cellist. A soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and teacher, he was the first Chinese musician to ever sign an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon.
Avner Dorman is an Israeli-born composer, educator and conductor.
Neil William Thomson is a British conductor and conducting professor.
Raymond Hyam Cohen was an English classical violinist.
Ya’akov Rubinstein is an Israeli violinist.
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