Yamen Saadi

Violin

As a soloist, Saadi has performed with orchestras such as Staatskapelle Berlin, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra de València and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, among others. Saadi has performed with conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Lionel Bringuier, Lawrence Foster, Leonidas Kavakos, Christoph Poppen and Lahav Shani.

Saadi has performed in recital and concerto at various festivals and venues across Europe, Asia and the US. These include; Carnegie Hall, Elbphilharmonie, Rheingau Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Pau Casals Festival, Jerusalem Festival and Schloss Elmau. In November 2023, he makes his recital debut in Tokyo at the Hamarikyu Asahi Hall and the Musashino Civic Cultural Hall.

In January 2022, Saadi released his first recital album Voices From Paris to critical acclaim. Recorded with pianist Nathalia Milstein and featuring works by Poulenc, Ysaÿe and Fauré, Saadi’s album was described as “the blend of virtuosity, lyricism and controlled expressivity” Pizzicato.

As a chamber musician, Saadi co-founded the award-winning Chianti Ensemble. The piano quintet tours Europe and was awarded the prestigious Kersjes Prize in 2022.

Yamen Saadi was born in Nazareth and began studying the violin at the Barenboim-Said Conservatory in Nazareth, before studying under the guidance of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra concertmaster, Chaim Taub. At age 11, he joined the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and, at age 17, became concertmaster of the orchestra. Saadi completed his Bachelor’s degree at the Barenboim-Said Academy and gained his Master’s degree at the Kronberg Academy where he studied with Mihaela Martin. In 2020, Saadi won first prize at both the Aviv and Paul Ben Haim Competitions in 2020, and has held scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and The Prince von Hessen Award.

Yamen Saadi plays the 1734 “Lord Amherst of Hackney” Stradivari violin, previously owned by Fritz Kreisler, and a Jacob Eury bow, both generously loaned to him by Stephan Jansen on behalf of a member of the Stretton Society.

Michael Guttman

Violin

Michael Guttman is a violinist, conductor and music director of prominent festivals around the world, including Pietrasanta in Concerto, Crans Montana Classics in Switzerland, Le Printemps du Violon in Paris, and Made in Polin in Warsaw. He is also the music director of the Napa Valley Symphony and the Belgian Chamber Orchestra.
Guttman received the prestigious Scopus Prize (2014) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for his achievements in music, and was also nominated for a Grammy award for his Hindemith Album with the Philarmonia Orchestra. He was the youngest violinist ever admitted to the Brussels Royal Conservatory at age 10. His debut at age 14, with Jean-Pierre Rampal, led to the meeting with his mentor Isaac Stern who recommended him for further studies at the Juilliard School in New York City where he studied with Dorothy Delay and The Juilliard Quartet. He studied with the legendary Russian violinist Boris Goldstein, in tribute to whom he organized a violin competition together with Professor Zakhar Bron in Bern, Switzerland in 2014. As Belgium’s leading violinist, he was chosen to represent his country in 1992, during the Sevilla Universal Exhibition.

Concerts at the Lincoln Center, Barbican Hall, Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, Salle Pleyel in Paris, and in Asia were followed by invitations to prestigious festivals such as, Progetto Martha Argerich, Flanders Festival, Bashmet’s Elba Festival, Folles Journées of Nantes and Tokyo, and the Menuhin Festival Gstaad. He premiered the Philip Glass Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in the USA and the Hong Kong Philhamonic for Asia, which were both conducted by Jaap Van Zweden. He has toured with Martha Argerich, Nestor Marconi, Nigel Kennedy, Boris Berezovsky and Vadim Repin among others.

After collaborating with composers and conductors such as Lukas Foss and Noam Sheriff, he developed his conducting career and in 2017, toured the most prestigious halls in Spain appearing with the legendary pianist Ivo Pogorelich. His encounter with Astor Piazzolla encouraged him to discover different styles of tango music, and in 2017 he created the first double concerto for violin and bandoneon with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and J.P. Jofre, the famous Argentinian bandoneon player.

Michael Guttman plays on a 1735 Guarneri del Gesù violin once owned by the great Italian violinist and composer Giovanni Battista Viotti.

Sara Ferrández

Viola

www.saraferrandez.com

Pablo Ferrández

Cello

www.pabloferrandez.com

Brendan Kane

Double Bass

Double Bassist Brendan Kane has performed extensively throughout North America, South American, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. In the spring of 2022, Mr. Kane was appointed Principal Bass of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra by Music Director Lahav Shani. Prior to the IPO, he was a member of the MET Orchestra for nine seasons, under the direction of Music Directors James Levine and subsequently Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Previously, Mr. Kane held the positions of Principal Bass of the Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais in Brazil, Assistant Principal Bass of the Vancouver Symphony in Canada and performed as Guest Principal Bass of the Hong Kong Philharmonic at the invitation of Edo de Waart. For over a decade he has been touring the world as Principal Bass of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (VFCO) under the direction of Music Director Gábor Takács-Nagy, including annual residencies at the Verbier Festival (Switzerland) and Schloss Elmau (Germany). Additionally, Mr. Kane is a regular guest with the Budapest Festival Orchestra at the invitation of Maestro Iván Fischer and performs every January at the St. Barths Music Festival in the Caribbean. He has also performed with the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Detroit Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), New York Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra (London), Pittsburgh Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, Mr. Kane has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, at the Verbier Festival, Schloss Elmau, toured with the International Sejong Soloists and appeared at numerous festivals on both sides of the Atlantic alongside musicians such as Pinchas Zukerman, Maxim Vengerov, Leonidas Kavakos, Tabea Zimmerman, Misha Maisky and Sir András Schiff among others. He was Principal Bass of the New York String Orchestra Seminar as well as a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, where he has returned numerous times as visiting faculty to coach and perform alongside current fellows at the invitation of Michael Tilson Thomas. A passionate educator, Mr. Kane has served as the Bass Coach for the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra and currently serves as the Bass Coach of the Pan Caucasian Youth Orchestra (PCYO) at the Tsinandali Festival in the country of Georgia in collaboration with Music Director Gianandrea Noseda. He is frequently invited to give masterclasses and lectures at conservatories and universities around the US, Europe, Brazil and Israel. Mr. Kane’s teachers have included Tim Cobb, Don Palma, Brian Liddle, Leigh Mesh and Jim Orleans. He holds degrees from the New England Conservatory and the Juilliard School.

Tsotne Zedginidze

Piano

Born into a family of musicians, Tsotne Zedginidze is a descendant of Niko Sulkhanishvili, considered one of the greatest Georgian composers of all time, and a renowned pedagogue, Anastasia Abdushelishvili-Virsaladze (whose students included Lev Vlassenko, Eliso Virsaladze, and Dimitry Bashkirov).

From a very young age, Tsotne showed a keen interest in opera, ballet, and instrumental and vocal music. At two years old, he could recognize and name different instruments. He began learning the piano at the age of five under his grandmother, Nino Mamradze, herself a pianist and teacher. His progress was remarkable; at only six years old, he performed elementary piano repertoire and started studying sonatas by Clementi, Scarlatti, Mozart, and Beethoven, as well as Bach’s Inventions for two and three voices, and pieces by Grieg, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, and Prokofiev. His extraordinary sight-reading abilities allowed him to accurately interpret many of these works on the first read. It was during this time that he developed a growing interest in opera, devouring Italian opera as well as works by Wagner and Strauss.

At six years old, Tsotne Zedginidze began composing and discovered 20th and 21st-century music. He continued his study of opera by playing voice scores of various operas on the piano, including Berg’s Lulu, Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. As a self-taught composer, he developed and personalized his style by experimenting and seeking new composition techniques. He always maintained a great interest in opera, eagerly watching productions from major opera houses worldwide.

Tsotne Zedginidze gave his first recital in Tbilisi in June 2019, where he performed works by Berg (Sonata, Op. 1), Bach, Shostakovich, and Janáček, along with a selection of his own compositions. A few months later, he performed at the Telavi International Music Festival organized by Eliso Virsaladze and participated in the opening of the season of the Georgian National Philharmonic Orchestra, where he played Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and his own works under the direction of Nikoloz Rachveli. This concert was dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In December 2019, with the support of the Paata Burchuladze’s Iavnana Foundation, Tsotne gave a solo recital at the Grand Hall of the Tbilisi State Conservatoire.

In June 2020, Tsotne premiered his piece “The Bells” for piano, composed during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, dedicated to the memory of his mother, Irene Sulkhanishvili.

In September 2021, Tsotne premiered his Sonata for Violin and Piano alongside Lisa Batiashvili and a piano duo with Sandro Nebieridze at the Tsinandali Festival. He participated in the ArtDialog international festival in Switzerland, performed at the Rachmaninov Museum in Villa Senar (also in Switzerland), and took part in masterclasses with Boris Berezovsky. In November 2021 and June 2022, Tsotne was invited to give recitals at Schloss Elmau. His concerts were highly praised by the audience, including the renowned pianist Grigory Sokolov, who said, “Tsotne’s compositions fit into the monumental world of Bach and Brahms.”

In 2022, at the invitation of Lisa Batiashvili, Tsotne gave a solo recital at the Audi Sommerkonzerte in Ingolstadt, Germany, where he premiered his Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra alongside the Georgian Chamber Orchestra and Nikoloz Rachveli. In July 2022, the pianist made his debut at the Verbier Festival, broadcast on medici.tv. With violinist Marc Bouchkov, he presented the opening of the Verbier Festival on medici.tv. Additionally, medici.tv produced a multi-episode conversation series between Tsotne and Marc Bouchkov, titled “Meet Tsotne.”

During the 2022-2023 season, Tsotne Zedginidze performed in Paris during a concert in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Mezzo television channel at the Cirque d’Hiver. He was also invited by Lahav Shani to participate in rehearsals for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in Rotterdam. Furthermore, he performed at the Kissinger Sommerfest and participated in the concert held at the Wiener Konzerthaus by the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation. During the summer of 2023, he gave a solo recital at Schloss Elmau and a chamber music concert with the renowned violinist Marc Bouchkov. He also gave recitals at the Verbier Festival 2023 and the Tsinandali Festival 2023, both events broadcast on medici.tv.

For the 2023-2024 season, Tsotne is invited to perform in Brussels, Munich, Berlin, and at Schloss Elmau. Among other works, he will interpret Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto with the Bavarian Youth Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle.

Since 2021, Tsotne Zedginidze has received support from the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation: he participates in various foundation concerts and receives material support for his studies. In December 2020, October 2021, and May 2023, with the foundation’s assistance, Tsotne traveled to Berlin to attend masterclasses by maestro Daniel Barenboim and Jörg Widmann. Additionally, in April 2023, he went to London to perform alongside conductors Alfred Brendel and Antonio Pappano.

Tsotne continues his studies with his grandmother, Nino Mamradze. He has also received several online lessons from Rena Shereshevskaya, who teaches at the École Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot.

Georgian composer Giya Kancheli had these words: “Musicians as phenomenal as Tsotne are born once a century.” Pianist Eliso Virsaladze commented, “In my life, I have never met anyone as remarkable as this child.” In an interview, conductor and composer Nikoloz Rachveli quoted Daniel Barenboim himself about Tsotne: “Mozart is back in Germany, from Georgia.”

Giorgi Gigashvili

Piano

www.giorgigigashvili.com