At the age of fifteen, clarinetist Chen Halevi debuted with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta and since then has appeared as soloist with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the European Soloists, the Moscow Virtuosi, the NDR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, and the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin. A frequent participant in summer festivals, Halevi has appeared at the Marlboro, Ravinia, and Santa Fe Festivals in the US, while his European appearances have included stops at Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia Cove, Davos, Aldeburgh and Verbier Chamber Music Festivals. He has performed with Pinchas Zuckerman and Christoph Eschenbach, as well as numerous string quartets, including the Keller, Fine Arts, Miro, Prazak, St. Lawrence, Vogler and Kronos Quartets. He is acknowledged as a specialist in the performance of contemporary music. His close ties with composers has led him to perform a great number of works by, amongst other, Berio, Kurtag, Lindberg, Golijov, Jarrell, Ferneyhough, Stroppa, Mantovani, and Ades. He is currently working on a major recording project, which presents an anthology of 20th Century music for clarinet, and includes his selections of the solo, chamber music, concerto, and electronic works, which changed the way we look at the clarinet today. He is the Clarinet Professor in the Trossingen Hochschule für Music in Germany and since 2007 has been a faculty member in the summer master classes at the Banff Centre. A native of the Negev Desert in Israel, he studied the clarinet with Yitzchak Kazap and Richard Lesser, continuing with Mordechai Rechtman and Chaim Taub for his chamber music studies.
Mayfest 