Artist Biographies
Itzhak Perlman
Itzhak Perlman was born in Israel in 1945 and completed his initial training at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. He then moved to New York, where, in 1958, he achieved international fame after performing on the Ed Sullivan Show. He continued his studies at the Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay and won the Leventritt Competition in 1964. Mr. Perlman made his San Francisco Symphony debut as a soloist in 1969, and made his podium debut here in 2001. He last appeared with the SFS as both conductor and soloist in 2004, and returned in February 2009 in a recital with pianist Rohan De Silva.
In January 2009, at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Mr. Perlman was featured in a performance of John Williams’s Air and Simple Gifts with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, clarinetist Anthony McGill, and pianist Gabriela Montero. This season is Mr. Perlman’s second as Artistic Director of the Westchester Philharmonic Orchestra; he also appears frequently as a guest conductor of ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, the Berlin, London, and Israel philharmonic orchestras, and the symphony orchestras of Chicago and Boston. He was music advisor to the Saint Louis Symphony from 2002 to 2004, and principal guest conductor of the Detroit Symphony from 2001 to 2005. In the 2009-10 season, Mr. Perlman will perform his Klezmer program, “In the Fiddler’s House,” at the opening of the Barvikha Concert Hall outside Moscow, and will present a recital with Rohan De Silva at the Moscow Conservatory. This season will also include a performance with the New York Philharmonic for World Polio Day, two West Coast tours, and recitals across North and Central America, including Mexico City, Atlanta, Miami, and Boston.
Mr. Perlman has received four Emmy awards, most recently for the PBS documentary Fiddling for the Future, a film about the Perlman Music Program. Mr. Perlman collaborated with composer John Williams as violin soloist in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, and he can be heard on composer Tan Dun’s soundtrack for Zhang Yimou’s Hero as well as John Williams’s soundtrack for Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha. Mr. Perlman’s recordings have earned fifteen Grammy awards, most recently for The American Album, recorded with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony. In February 2008, Mr. Perlman was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for excellence in the recording arts.
Itzhak Perlman has taught at the Perlman Music Program each summer since it was founded, and he currently holds the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Chair at the Juilliard School. He was awarded an honorary doctorate and a centennial medal on the occasion of Juilliard’s 100th commencement ceremony in 2005, and he also holds honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Brandeis, Roosevelt, Yeshiva, and Hebrew universities. President Reagan honored him with a Medal of Liberty in 1986, and in 2000 President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts.
Mr. Perlman records for EMI/Angel, Sony Classical/Sony BMG Masterworks, Deutsche Grammophon, London/Decca, Erato/Elektra International Classics, and Telarc.
Mr. Perlman appears by arrangement with IMG Artists.