Shmuel Ashkenasi

Shmuel Ashkenazi ( born January 11, 1941 in Tel Aviv) is an Israeli violinist.

Life

Ashkenazi studied at the Music Academy of Tel Aviv in Ilona Feher. He then went to study with a scholarship to the United States to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia with Efrem Zimbalist. He received international attention as the winner of the Belgian Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962.

He made ​​two concert tours of the Soviet Union occurred in the Far East and in Israel and performed regularly in Europe. He worked with the major orchestras of Europe and the United States under such conductors as Leopold Stokowski, Karl Böhm, Rudolf Kempe, Erich Leinsdorf, Rafael Kubelik, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and Karel Ancerl.

In 1962 he founded the Vermeer Quartet, as its first violinist, he is one of the major chamber musicians of our time. He is a professor and artist- in-residence at Northern Illinois University and has been teaching since 2000 at the Musikhochschule Lübeck.