Yehonatan Berick
Violin

A prizewinner at the 1993 Naumburg competition and a recipient of the 1996-97 Prix Opus, Yehonatan Berick is in high demand internationally as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician (on violin as well as on viola) and pedagogue. His busy concert schedule has already taken him throughout North America, Europe and Israel.

He has performed, among others, under Yoav Talmi, Mendi Rodan, Kees Baakels and Keith Lockhart, with the Quebec, Winnipeg, Windsor, Jerusalem and Haifa Symphonies, and the Israeli, Cincinnati, Montreal and Manitoba Chamber Orchestras. He has presented numerous recitals with such pianists as James Tocco, Louis Lortie, Stephen Prutsman and Michael Chertock, and collaborated in chamber music performances with David Soyer and Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet, cellists Peter Wiley and Stephen Isserlis, clarinetists Wolfgang Meyer and James Campbell, flutist Julius Baker and many others from a long list of internationally renowned artists.

Berick's many festival credits include Marlboro, Ravinia, Seattle, Vancouver, Ottawa, Jerusalem, El Paso, Great Lakes (Michigan), Leicester (U.K.), Moritzburg (Germany), Lapland (Sweden), Riihimaki (Finland), Strings in the Mountains (Colorado), and Bowdoin (Maine). Touring as a chamber musician with Musicians from Marlboro, The Lortie-Berick-Lysy Piano Trio, the Huberman String Quartet and other chamber ensembles, he has been featured in the world's most important music centres: 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 Palais Montcalm).

On CD, Berick has recorded for the Summit, Gasparo, Acoma, JMC 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, piano and string quartet by Chausson; tbe 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.

Yehonatan Berick is currently Professor of Violin at the School of Music at the University if Michigan at Ann Arbor. Previously he has held the position of Professor of Violin at McGill University, as well as Visiting Professor of Violin at the Eastman School of Music. He has been invited as teacher and artist-in-residence at Bowdoin Music Festival (Maine), Keshet Eilon Mastercourse (Israel), and the JMC Young Players' Unit (Israel). Wherever he performs, he is available for masterclasses.

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 violin teachers were Ilona Feher, Henry Meyer, Kurt Sassmanshauss, and Dorothy Delay. 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 currently plays on an 1852 Honore Derazy Pere violin.