Monday, April 25
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Portsmouth, 10:30 am
Robin Hixon Theater, Clay and Jay Barr Education Center, 7:30 am
A regular and beloved guest on the world’s great concert stages, the Jerusalem Quartet visits Tidewater for two concerts with the Virginia Arts Festival.
Since the ensemble’s founding in 1993 and subsequent 1996 debut, these Israeli musicians have embarked on a journey of growth and maturation. In fact, the four musicians each have extensive resumes, performing throughout the world with the finest conductors and orchestras solo, and with the Quartet.
With Jerusalem as their ‘home base’ the Quartet’s members are not exactly ‘from’ Jerusalem.
The three founding members—Alexander Pavlovsky, Sergei Bresler, and Kyril Zlotnikov—met as students while attending the Jerusalem Academy for Music and Dance in Jerusalem. Pavlovsky and Bresler are originally from Ukraine (Kyiv and Kharkiv, respectively). They both currently live in the Jerusalem area. Zlotnikov is originally from Minsk, Belarus, and now lives in Lisbon, Portugal. Ori Kam, the fourth member, was born in La Jolla, Calif. and lived in both the U.S. and Israel while growing up, and currently lives in Tel Aviv. Kam joined the group in 2010 when the founding violist, Amihai Grosz, left to join the Berlin Philharmonic.
When in Tidewater, the Jerusalem Quartet will perform works by Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Webern, and Tchaikovsky.
The New York Times said, “A good string quartet, wisdom has it, is like a single instrument with 16 strings. That sort of unity of sound and purpose is a given in any performance by the extraordinary Jerusalem Quartet.”
For more information on the Jerusalem Quartet in Tidewater, go to vafest.org.