National Arts Centre Orchestra, Pinchas Zukerman, Amanda Forsyth & Charles Hamann
Biography National Arts Centre Orchestra, Pinchas Zukerman, Amanda Forsyth & Charles Hamann
Amanda Forsyth
Canadian Juno Award-winning Amanda Forsyth is considered one of North America's most dynamic cellists. She has achieved her international reputation as soloist, chamber musician and was principal cello of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra from 1999 to 2015. Her intense richness of tone, remarkable technique and exceptional musicality combine to enthrall audiences and critics alike.
She has performed on tours with the Royal Philharmonic and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras, and has appeared with such orchestras as Orchestre Radio de France, Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra and the Maggio Musicale Orchestra. In the U.S. she has performed with the San Diego, Colorado, Oregon and Grand Rapids Symphonies and appeared with the Dallas Symphony in both Texas and on tour. Performances with the Moscow Virtuosi in both Moscow and St Petersburg in 2011 were filmed for national television broadcast. In June 2012 Ms. Forsyth appeared with the Mariinsky Orchestra in St Petersburg conducted by Valery Gergiev and was reengaged as part of the reopening of the hall in 2013. In March 2014, Ms. Forsyth made her Carnegie Hall debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Last season Ms. Forsyth was invited for her first homecoming tour of South Africa performing Malcom Forsyth's Elektra Rising among other repertoire. She was then re-engaged to return in March 2016 for solo performances. Her season began in Australia with concerts in Sydney and Perth followed by a South American tour to Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, performing works with orchestra by Dvorak, Bruch and Brahms, and appearing with the Zukerman Trio. Other concerto highlights include the Herbert Cello Concert with the San Carlo Orchestra in Naples, Italy, and the Shostakovich Concerto with the Gyonggi Philharmonic in Korea. Brahms Double Concerto performances bring her to Mumbai with the Israel Philharmonic, and Spain and the United Kingdom with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; North American performances of this work will take place in Calgary and Greensboro, NC. She performs with Bargemusic's Masterworks Series in New York City and tours with the Zukerman Trio to Korea, Italy, Japan, and to the 92nd Street Y's Distinguished Artist Series.
As a founding member of the Zukerman ChamberPlayers she has visited Germany, Israel, Italy, Finland, Holland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Turkey, and cities such as London, Vienna, Paris, Belgrade, Budapest, Dubrovnik, Warsaw and Barcelona, and performed for the Petra Conference for Nobel Laureates in Jordan. In addition, this ensemble was celebrated in a series in New York at the 92nd Street Y and performed several South American tours. A regular guest artist at Japan’s Miyazaki Festival, she also appeared in gala fundraising concerts following the Japanese earthquake disaster. As cellist of the Zukerman Trio, she has performed in Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Romania and the US including summer festivals in Edinburgh, Verbier, BBC Proms and Ravinia.
Ms. Forsyth’s recordings appear on the Sony Classics, Naxos, Altara, Fanfare, Marquis, Pro Arte and CBC labels. In 2002 she was the subject of the Bravo! Canada television documentary Amanda Rising: The Amanda Forsyth Story. The program followed Ms. Forsyth’s life from her early years as a young South African immigrant to her later success on the international music scene. In 2007 Ms. Forsyth featured prominently on Wynton Marsalis’s soundtrack for The War, Ken Burns’s widely-acclaimed World War II documentary filmed for PBS. Her recording of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with the Zukerman ChamberPlayers and Yefim Bronfman was released by Sony in 2008;a recording of the Brahms Double Concerto with Pinchas Zukerman and the National Arts Centre Orchestra was released last fall by Analekta Records.
Born in South Africa, Ms. Forsyth moved to Canada as a child and began playing cello at age three. She became a protégé of William Pleeth in London, and later studied with Harvey Shapiro at the Juilliard School. Ms. Forsyth performs on a rare 1699 Italian cello by Carlo Giuseppe Testore.
Carles "Chip" Hamann
was appointed to the principal oboe chair of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra in 1993 at the age of 22. He has also been guest principal oboist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Québec’s renowned baroque orchestra, Les Violons du Roy. Mr. Hamann is a member of the National Arts Centre Wind Quintet, comprised of principal players of NACO.
This chamber ensemble has played recitals and given clinics across North America, the UK, and China. Their disc of music for wind instruments by Camille Saint-Saëns with pianist Stéphane Lemelin for the Naxos label was awarded an Editor’s Choice award from Gramophone Magazine. A sought-after soloist, Chip Hamann has appeared with Les Violons du Roy, the Affinis Festival Orchestra in Japan, Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra, the Alberta Baroque Ensemble, and Ottawa’s Thirteen Strings.
He has appeared nearly every season for over 20 years as soloist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in a diverse range of major concerti, both in Ottawa and on tour. He will record the Bach Double Concerto with violinist Pinchas Zukerman and NACO in November 2015. Also an active recitalist, Mr. Hamann will record a CD of works for oboe and piano by Canadian composers with pianist Frédéric Lacroix in July 2016, including several commissioned works.
He can be heard on the ATMA, Analekta, CBC, CanSona and Naxos labels, as well as the NACMusicbox online archive of NACO performances. Mr. Hamann is Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa School of Music and is on the faculty of the NAC Summer Music Institute each June. He has taught at the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, l’Orchestre de la francophonie canadienne, and given masterclasses and reed clinics across the US, Canada, Mexico, China and Japan.
He has appeared as a guest artist at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA, Mr. Hamann is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy. He was later awarded a Bachelor of Music and the prestigious Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music in of Rochester, NY, where he was a student of Richard Killmer.
Pinchas Zukerman
has remained a phenomenon in the world of classical music for over four decades. His musical genius, prodigious technique and unwavering artistic standards are a marvel to audiences and critics. Devoted to the next generation of musicians, he has inspired younger artists with his magnetism and passion. His enthusiasm for teaching has resulted in innovative programs in London, New York, China, Israel and Ottawa. The name Pinchas Zukerman is equally respected as violinist, violist, conductor, pedagogue and chamber musician.
Pinchas Zukerman's 2017 summer engagements included appearances in Tanglewood, Ravinia Spain, Japan, and a South American tour in Chile, Brazil and Argentina. Pinchas Zukerman is equally lauded as a conductor as he is an instrumentalist, leading many of the world's top ensembles in a wide variety of the orchestral repertoire's most demanding works. 2017-2018 marks his ninth season as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and his third as Artist-in-Association with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. As soloist and conductor, Mr. Zukerman leads the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Baltimore, San Diego, Vancouver, Nashville and New West Symphonies, and tours with Camerata Salzburg in Romania, Turkey, Hungary, Germany and Italy; and with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the United States, United Kingdom and Italy. As a soloist, he appears with the San Francisco Symphony, Manchester Camerata, Prague Symphony Orchestra, and Pacific Symphony Orchestra in California and on tour in China. He joins long-time friend Itzhak Perlman for a gala performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. The duo also appears in recitals with pianist Rohan De Silva in Boston, Newark, Miami and West Palm Beach. As the founding member of the Zukerman Trio, he travels with the ensemble to Savannah, Detroit, Chicago, Sedona and Germany. He frequently tours with cellist Amanda Forsyth in performances of the Brahms Double Concerto and other duo repertoire.
A devoted and innovative pedagogue, Mr. Zukerman chairs the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music, where he pioneered the use of distance-learning technology in the arts over two decades ago. In Canada, where he served as Music Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra from 1999-2015, he established the NAC Institute for Orchestra Studies and the Summer Music Institute encompassing the Young Artists, Conductors and Composers Programs. He currently serves as Conductor Emeritus of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, as well as Artistic Director of its Young Artist Program.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1948, Pinchas Zukerman came to America in 1962 where he studied at The Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian as a recipient of the American Israel Cultural Federation scholarship. An alumnus of the Young Concert Artists program, Mr. Zukerman has also received honorary doctorates from Brown University, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and University of Calgary. He has been awarded the Medal of Arts, the Isaac Stern Award for Artistic Excellence and was appointed as the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative's first instrumentalist mentor in the music discipline. Pinchas Zukerman's extensive discography contains over 100 titles, and has earned him 2 Grammy awards and 21nominations. His complete recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and Philips were released in July 2016, in a 22-disc set spanning Baroque, Classical and Romantic concertos and chamber music. Recent releases include Baroque Treasury on Analekta with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, cellist Amanda Forsyth and oboist Charles Hamann in works by Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Tartini; Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 and Double Concerto with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Ms. Forsyth, recorded in live performances at Ottawa’s Southam Hall; and a critically acclaimed album of works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
