Out & About
We’re not Haydn! Learn more about our activities around the world.
Bringing Students to the Music
This month the Israel Philharmonic concerts that conclude the current semester’s KeyNote music education program will be out-of-this-world. Since its launch in 2000, thanks largely to support from the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic, the IPO’s KeyNote music education program has been extending its reach into schools across Israel. Later this month, when the current curriculum culminates in a series of full orchestra performances, the soaring music will be part of KeyNote’s collaboration w...
Read MoreIPO Musicians: Yigal Meltzer
The IPO’s Principal Trumpet connects generations – in his family and his community – to a musical heritage. In 1991, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was seeking a fourth chair, utility trumpet player. One of the musicians who auditioned, nearing the end of his army service, was a young man playing in the Israel Defense Forces Orchestra. “When I heard that the Philharmonic was conducting tryouts,” recalled Yigal Meltzer, now 49, “I told a friend, ‘Listen to me good: That position is...
Read MoreThe IPO in America
Announcing the cities, programs and benefit events for the Israel Philharmonic’s February 2019 U.S. tour. From February 2 through 9, 2019, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra will be back in the United States for Maestro Zubin Mehta‘s final American tour as IPO Music Director. There will be six concerts: two in New York, three in Florida, and one in Michigan. Benefit events will enhance the experience in New York City, West Palm Beach and Miami by providing a chance to mingle with the Maestro and personally thank ...
Read MoreSupporting AFIPO: Varda Rabin
The 2018 San Francisco Gala Co-Chair Continues to Overcompensate for Childhood ‘Naughtiness’ in Tel Aviv Varda Rabin has a confession to make. “I will have to share with you a little bit about naughtiness,” she said playfully by telephone from her home in Tiburon. Rabin is one of six co-chairs organizing the AFIPO’s Annual San Francisco fundraiser on October 28 and a prominent figure in launching and sustaining Jewish institutions in Northern California and her native Israel. She and he...
Read MoreFall Benefits: Top Brass
One shared highlight of this month’s three AFIPO benefits will be performances by the Israel Philharmonic Brass Quintet This month, while the three annual AFIPO benefits will uniquely reflect their host cities – New York on October 23, Los Angeles on October 25, and San Francisco on October 28 – they will share two central elements: raising funds for the IPO’s KeyNote education programs and a performance by the IPO Brass Quintet. For the three AFIPO benefits, Maestro Zubin Mehta has selected five members of ...
Read MoreThe IPO’s 83rd
The Israel Philharmonic’s 2018-19 Season brims with musical highlights and historical significance Even before its first note is played on Thursday, October 4 in Tel Aviv, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s 83rd Season is destined to be among its most historic. Maestro Zubin Mehta has planned a panoramic 2018-2019 Season of the world’s greatest music and invited many of the world’s most sought-after guest conductors and soloists to join him for what will be his triumphant final season as the orchestr...
Read MoreAFIPO History: How it All Started
Bruce Nadler recalls when Zubin Mehta, Fredric R. Mann, and Morton S. Ackerman launched the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Fredric Mann with Zubin Mehta In 1981, months before his appointment to be the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s Music Director for Life, Maestro Zubin Mehta sought help to raise funds for the orchestra. He decided to start his search with the American donor whose name graced the orchestra’s home in Tel Aviv. Decades before he helped the IPO build an auditorium in...
Read More2018 LA Gala Honoree: Stanley Silverman
AFIPO to celebrate the composer’s life and career on the occasion of his 80th Birthday year. This October, the 2018 AFIPO Galas, first in New York and then Los Angeles, will each honor extraordinary individuals whose respective achievements in architecture and music have touched millions of people around the globe. In August, we visited with New York Gala Honoree architect Daniel Libeskind. This month we prof...
Read More2018 NY Gala Honoree: Daniel Libeskind
The internationally renowned architect behind Berlin’s Jewish Museum and the Ground Zero Master Plan began as a musical child prodigy. This year the AFIPO’s New York and Los Angeles Galas will honor two extraordinary individuals whose respective achievements in architecture and music have touched millions of people around the globe and will continue to inspire generations to come. Next month we will pro...
Read MoreInterview with Yossi Arnheim
The IPO’s Principal flutist talks with his teacher’s granddaughter. AFIPO Patron Circle member Ilana Ransom Toeplitz recently met for an interview with Yossi Arnheim, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal flutist and a longtime student of Uri Toeplitz, Ilana’s grandfather and an original 1936 member of the orchestra. In addition to Arnheim’s decades in the IPO, he has performed with other Israeli orchestras and in recitals across Europe and in America, Brazil and Asia. The excite...
Read MoreMusic in the Mountains
Magical is a word that was often uttered during our sold-out July patron trip to Aspen. Twenty friends of the Israel Philharmonic from across the US and Canada gathered for a spectacular long weekend that showcased Aspen’s best cultural offerings. Our exquisite home base was the Little Nell hotel and each day was filled with visits to private art collections and tours of the Aspen Art Museum, the Aspen Music School Buchsbaum Campus, the Anderson Art Ranch, and Maroon Bells. The trip was built around no...
Read MoreA Leonard Bernstein Trio
A new exhibition in Philadelphia, a daughter’s memoir and a Tanglewood concert have special appeal for the AFIPO. The two years of special concerts, exhibitions and conferences currently underway to honor Leonard Bernstein, are part of a worldwide centennial celebration centered around the 100th Anniversary of his birth next month, on August 25, 2018. Here are three ways for AFIPO members to deepen and share their appreciation for Leonard Bernstein as we near the big day. BERNSTEIN’S ISRAEL CONNECT...
Read MoreIntroduction to Huberman
Former Journalist Peter Aronson brings the IPO’s founder and founding to middle-grade readers. It will soon be easy for those who love the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to share the extraordinary story of its founder and founding with young readers. On July 17, Peter Aronson‘s Bronislaw Huberman: From Child Prodigy To Hero, The Violinist Who Saved Jewish Musicians From The Holocaust launches the author’s series of books for middle-grade readers. The New York-based attorney and former journalist describes h...
Read More2018 Fundraisers Announced
Dates, co-Chairs and Honorees are set for major AFIPO events to celebrate and support the Israel Philharmonic in LA, NY and SF this fall. American Friends of Israel Philharmonic NYC Gala honoring Zubin Mehta, 10/25/17. Photo by Chris Lee This October the AFIPO will host annual galas in New York and Los Angeles and a special benefit in San Francisco. While each will be unique, chaired by that city’s business and cultural leaders, they all will share in celebrating the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and supporting its edu...
Read MorePlaytime with the Israel Philharmonic: A Glimpse of Keynote
Danielle Ames Spivak, West Coast Director L’dor V’dor – Danielle and her mother Tracy and daughter Alexandra standing outside the Charles Bronfman Auditorium. It’s not hard to guess that my favorite destination in Tel Aviv is the Charles Bronfman Auditorium. I recently returned from Israel and I wanted to share with you the highlight of my meaningful trip. The last time I had been to Israel was in 2011 to c...
Read MoreInterview with Yevgenia Pikovsky and Dmitry Ratush
An AFIPO interview with an IPO couple married to music… and each other Arranging our family schedules so we never miss a concert is one thing. For two Israel Philharmonic members who are married to the orchestra and each other, the challenge is having a family schedule. Yevgenia Pikovsky, who leads the orchestra’s second violin section, and her husband Dmitry Ratush, the IPO’s Assistant Principal...
Read MoreInterview with Chara Schreyer
One of the world’s leading collectors has a unique gift for supporting the Israel Philharmonic As an arts patron, Chara Schreyer has been ranked by ArtNews among the world’s top 200 collectors for 16 consecutive years. As a philanthropist, her support for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is one-of-a-kind. In March, Schreyer hosted an event for the AFIPO’s West Coast Chairman’s Council, providing a personal tour of the Hollywood Hills home she and husband Gordon Freund share with major works by...
Read MoreWinter & Spring 2018 at the AFIPO
Private Art Tour Members of the West Coast Chairman’s Council and AFIPO Board members attend a private art tour hosted by Chara Schreyer. AFIPO Board Retreat Itzhak the Film Screening Film Director Alison Chernick in a Q&A after the screening. San Francisco Musicale Israeli Chamber Project (including IPO principal flutist Guy Eshed) performance for patrons of the IPO in the Bay Area. &nbs...
Read MoreISRAEL AT 70
Celebrations from Tel Aviv to New York mark the anniversary of national independence. The ceremony in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art on Friday, May 14, 1948, had been organized with such secrecy that the invited guests had learned of the location only ten minutes before it began. Inside were the 13 Ministers of the Government, the rest of the national administration, and the musicians who before long would serve as the new nation’s most visible cultural ambassadors. The Palestine Symphony Orchestra, which would soo...
Read MoreInterview with Avi Shoshani
An interview with the IPO’s longtime Secretary General Avi Shoshani, the Secretary General of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, joined the IPO in 1973. At 25, he began a historic artistic partnership with Maestro Zubin Mehta, who four years earlier was appointed IPO Music Advisor. Together, as Israel marked its 25th Anniversary, they would reinvigorate both the roster and role of this influential institution. Last fall, while accompanying the Israel Philharmonic on its North American tour, Mr. Shoshani took ti...
Read MoreA Patron Party in Aspen
The 70th Annual Aspen Music Festival is just one part of July’s AFIPO Patrons Trip This July, the 70th Aspen Music Festival will provide the backdrop and musical highlights for an AFIPO members-only trip that includes elegant dinners in beautiful homes, guided tours of art museums and private collections, and time to explore this famous Rocky Mountain retreat and celebrity haven. “The Music Festival concerts will be wonderful,” said AFIPO West Coast Director Danielle Ames Spivak. “But they̵...
Read MoreKeyNote’s Continuing Course
Expanded programs are helping the IPO Education Department reach more children in 2018. KeyNote, the Israel Philharmonic’s dynamic Music Education and Community Outreach Department, is expanding existing programs and introducing several new ones. The wider range of interactive experiences – from full orchestra concerts in Bronfman Auditorium to IPO musicians visiting schools across Israel – will add to the tens of thousands of children of all ages and ethnicities who annually benefit from KeyNote. Instrumen...
Read MoreConcerts of a Lifetime
David Jacoby and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra go way back. David Jacoby‘s attendance record with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra may indeed be a record: There are 81 years between his first concert in Tel Aviv and his most recent one in Los Angeles. It’s a relationship that spans the lifetimes of both orchestra and octogenarian, with Jacoby continuing to provide the IPO with annual financial support and by purchasing Gala tickets to every Los Angeles concert. “The orchestra is a pr...
Read MoreBuchmann-Mehta in Miami
On February 8, musicians from the IPO and Tel Aviv University will showcase their institutions’ historic partnership. It is shaping up to be a landmark year for Tamir Chuzhoy, a Tel Aviv University student from the remote Israeli town of Netivot. Recently, the TAU Buchmann-Mehta School of Music bassist was accepted into the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Now he is one of eight musicians hand-selected by Maestro Zubin Mehta to perform on February 8 at an exclusive black tie event in Miami. “Eight on Feb 8,”...
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