Prof. Chen Halevi

Vita

The debut of 15-year-old clarinettist Chen Halevi with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Metha was a sensation. Born in the Negev desert in Israel, he studied clarinet with Yitzhak Kazap and Richard Lesser and chamber music with Mordechai Rechtman and Chaim Taub. Today Chen Halevi is one of the world's leading clarinet virtuosos and plays solo programmes as well as solo concerts with orchestra and chamber music with equal success. He stands for an impressive range of repertoire, from the most difficult contemporary music to early music on authentic baroque instruments.

Halevi has performed as a soloist with major orchestras in the United States, Europe and Japan, including the Israel Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, Jerusalem Radio Orchestra, MDR and NDR Symphony Orchestras, Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin and, for the first time in 2010, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra on the occasion of the American premiere of Magnus Lindberg's composition "Kraft" conducted by Alan Gilbert.

Chen Halevi has performed at the festivals of Marlboro, Ravinia and Santa Fe in the USA and in Europe at festivals in Schleswig Holstein, Colmar, Forcalquier, Prussia Cove, Davos and Verbier. He has also participated in the PMF Festival in Japan and the Perth International Arts Festival.

A great lover of chamber music, Chen Halevi has performed with Pinchas Zuckerman and Christoph Eschenbach as well as with well-known string quartets such as Keller, Szymanowski, Fine arts, Miro, St. Lawrence, Vogler and Kronos Quartets.

He is internationally recognised as a masterful specialist in the performance of contemporary music. Through his close connections with composers he has performed a large number of works by, among others, Berio, Kurtag, Lindberg, Golijov, Maresz, Jarrell, Ferneyhough, Stroppa, Mantovani and Ades. Several works have also been dedicated to Chen Halevi, including a cycle by Denis Cohen, "Nodus" for clarinet solo, "Ombre" for clarinet and electronics, "soft machine" for clarinet and cello, a clarinet trio by Lior Navok, "Les asperges de la lune" for clarinet solo and the clarinet concerto "Doppelgänger" by Sven Ingo Koch.

Halevi's appointment as professor at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Trossingen in 2001 was a revolution for the German music academy landscape, as he is one of the very few clarinettists in such a position who does not play the "German system", but the "Boehm clarinet" used outside the German-speaking world. This enrichment, further development and opening of the traditional clarinet training in Germany means great opportunities for his students. 

Since 2007 he has been one of the lecturers at the summer festival of the "Banff Center".

In 2007 Chen Halevi founded ClaRecords, a company that commissions, produces and records new works by today's leading as well as young and emerging composers. ClaRecords also collaborates with other types of modern art to stimulate dialogue between different forms of expression in the 21st century. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)