Virtuoso clarinetist Igor Begelman will be the featured performer at Goucher’s 27th Annual Janet and Avery Fisher Music Residency, which will be held at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 8, in the college’s Merrick Lecture Hall.
This event is free and open to the public, but tickets must be reserved by logging onto www.goucher.edu/tickets or by calling 410-337-6333.
Begelman will also present a master class on Thursday, March 7, at 7 p.m. and a lecture/demonstration on Friday, March 8, at 12:30 p.m. The public is invited to observe both events, which are free and will be held in Merrick Lecture Hall.
Begelman, a 2000 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, has earned critical praise for virtuosity and imagination on his instrument, both as recitalist and a chamber musician.
In recent seasons he appeared as a soloist with the I Musici de Montreal, Houston Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Boston Classical Orchestra, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, as well as in recitals at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, New York’s Merkin Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, 92nd Street Y, Boston’s Faneuil Hall, and Los Angeles’ Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.
He has also soloed with the Bangor, Key West, Fairbanks, New Haven, Savannah and Greenwich symphonies, Bienne Symphony Orchestra, and Odense Simfoniker. He has performed recitals in Western and Eastern Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Israel.
Begelman has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and has appeared at numerous festivals throughout the world, including Alpenglow, Caramoor, Casals, Juneau, Marlboro, Moab, Schleswig-Holstein, Tanglewood, and Tucson. An avid proponent of new music, he has also premiered compositions by David Robert Coleman, Jennifer Higdon, Alex Krasotov, Anton Kuerti, Meyer Kupferman, Elliot Schwartz, and Ralph Shapey.
In addition to the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Begelman was awarded top prizes at the Carl Nielsen International Clarinet Competition in Denmark and the Geneva International Competition in Switzerland. He also earned top prizes at the William C. Byrd Competition, International Clarinet Society Competition, Heida Hermanns International Competition, Tilden Prize Competition, and Crane New Music Competition, among others.
An active educator, Begelman has served as a professor of clarinet at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and as the director of the woodwind program at the Bowdoin International Music Festival. He teaches at Brooklyn College and Sarah Lawrence College and has guest lectured at Yale University, the Juilliard School of Music, and the Manhattan School of Music, in addition to many master classes throughout the United States.
Raised in Kiev, Ukraine, Begelman came to the United States in 1989. He received his master’s degree from the Juilliard School of Music and a bachelor’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music.
The Janet and Avery Fisher Music Residency is funded by the late Janet Fisher, a 1938 Goucher alumna, in memory of her late husband. This annual two-day residency offers music students the opportunity to interact with and learn from internationally known professional musicians. Past Fisher artists in residence have included Inon Barnatan, Shai Wosner, and Anthony McGill.