Gifted young musicians are unable to realize their full potential without highly qualified professional instruction and a guiding support. Nurturing the next generation of musicians is the key to a world rich in highly qualified music, offered to the musicians themselves and to the music loving public.
The Perlman Music Program, an inspiring initiative of Toby Perlman, was founded 30 years ago, aiming to cultivate future classical music musicians. Since its establishment the Program has greatly developed and became the leading program in its field.
Exceptionally talented young string musicians, from all over the world, are carefully chosen to take part in a variety of yearly programs in New York, Shelter Island, Florida, Vermont and Israel. The Program aims to ensure that every young talented musician will be able to participate regardless of his or her financial state.
The faculty is led by Itzhak Perlman and is comprised of some of the most gifted musical talents of our time, from the best American schools of music. The Program operates within a warm and supportive musical community that offers an artistic and personal experience that deeply affects participants’ lives.
Activities open to the general and professional public are offered in the course of the program. Faculty members and young musicians take part in public sessions, master classes as well as sessions with Itzhak Perlman.
The Need
The Perlman Music Program, will offer a rare opportunity to bring some of the most preeminent music teachers in the world to Israel to train and instruct gifted Israeli youngsters. The program will host 34 students, ages 12-18, to take part in two and a half weeks of intensive musical instruction by a world-renowned faculty. Half of the students will be Israeli, selected through a competitive audition process, while the other half will be students from around the world specially selected to attend.
Israeli alumni participants of the Perlman Music Program are leading musicians in world orchestras, and others have gone on to international careers as soloists and chamber music players. Recently, violinist Itamar Zorman, who participated in the 2000 Perlman Music Program, won two prestigious international awards: at The International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant at the Lincoln Center New York.
The practice facilities, studios and beautiful concert halls of the Arison Conservatory are the perfect locale to host the program. The conservatory is able to provide each student with a practice room and each faculty member with a state of the art teaching studio. Holding the program at the Arison Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv provides an exceptional opportunity for young Israeli musicians of excellence from across Israel and all over the world to join together with top-notch musicians lead by the renowned Itzhak Perlman and his team. Participants will receive an intensive two and a half weeks of rigorous musical activity; playing in an orchestra under the baton of Maestro Perlman, working in chamber groups led personally by consummate teachers, and singing daily in the choir.
Participants will receive personal tutoring and training from the program’s teachers. In addition to the music education, students will be offered trips around Israel, affording them an opportunity to get acquainted with the local culture and sights of this fascinating country while forming life-long friendships.
Itzhak Perlman
The virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman has gained the eminence of a super star, rarely attributed to a classical musician. People world-wide like him because of his personal charm, his humanity, and of course, his incredible talent and love of performing music.
Mr. Perlman was born in Israel in 1945 and drew significant attention in 1958 when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. In 1964 he won the prestigious Leventritt Competition from which he embarked on an international career. Since then, Mr. Perlman has performed as a violinist with the world’s best orchestras in recitals and festivals. In addition to being a renowned violinist, Mr. Perlman performs as a conductor with the leading orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw, The Israel Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.
Mr. Perlman is invited to perform in the White House on special occasions. Thus, he performed in a ceremony in which President Obama awarded the Freedom Medal to Israeli president Shimon Peres. He also performed at a state dinner offered by President Bush honoring Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. Mr. Perlman was invited to perform in the Inauguration ceremony for Barak Obama along with other leading musicians. They played a piece written for the event by the renowned composer John Williams, with whom Mr. Perlman had cooperated in the past playing solo pieces in the sound track of the Oscar winning movie “Schindler’s List.”
Mr. Perlman was awarded four Emmy Awards and sixteen Grammy Awards.
Mr. Perlman is a faculty member at the Perlman Program as well as at Juilliard, where he was nominated the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Chair in Violin Studies. He is an active participant in all the Perlman Program’s meetings, including those of the current program in Israel.
He is involved in all aspects of the Program, such as choosing the repertoire and study program. He gives the participants individual sessions, serves as the Program’s orchestra conductor, joins the choir singers and is present at all chamber music concerts.
Toby Perlman
Toby Perlman divides her adult life into two parts: chapter one – the years during which she was a housewife, her children’s mother and a wife. With her husband, the renowned violinist, Izthak Perlman by her side, Toby weathered their children’s illnesses as she battled cancer on more than one occasion. Chapter two in her life begins when her children became independent, and she could turn her focus to making her lifelong dream a reality. Since her student days at Juilliard in the violin class of Ivan Galamyan and Dorothy Daly, she visualized a program for outstanding young musicians; a program that would provide a supportive and enriching study environment, that will boost their talent and allow it to flourish, and at the same time will also allow them to preserve their childhood experiences.
The Perlman Program was founded on the basis of this vision.
In addition to her role as manager of the Perlman Program, Toby dedicates her time to enhance culture education and lectures before audiences in educational institutions and at the Music Academy.
Toby is the grandmother of nine grandsons.