Tamar Halperin, Etienne Abelin and Tomek Kolczynski
Biography Tamar Halperin, Etienne Abelin and Tomek Kolczynski
Tamar Halperin
has a PhD form the Juilliard School, New York. She performs extensively as a soloist and as a chamber musician, both on the piano and the harpsichord and has a repertoire that ranges from the early Baroque to contemporary classical compositions.
She won the Eisen-Picard Performing Arts Award (2006-7); the Presser Doctoral Award (2005); the REC Music award (2005); an honorary prize at the International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges (2004), and was the recipient of the C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellowship and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship. Tamar Halperin holds a Bachelor's degree with high distinction from Tel-Aviv University, and a Master's degree from the Juilliard School in New York, where she also worked as a teaching assistant.
Currently, she is researching music at the facility of Renaissance and Baroque Musical Practices at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland.
Etienne Abelin
is a conductor, violinist and curator with a passion for new directions in classical music. He is the founder of classYcal, a start-up dedicated to innovations in classical music including the Ynight club nights ("Best of 2013" Züritipp, "Exactly what was missing in the Swiss concert landscape" Tagesanzeiger Zurich) and the Apples&Olives Indie Classical Festival Zurich. With the music visualization approach Music:Eyes, he has toured worldwide and held two TEDx talks/performances. With his ensemble bachSpace - Bach & Electronics, he gave his Concertgebouw Amsterdam debut in 2014.
A member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and from 2004 - 2011 principal second violin of the Orchestra Mozart Bologna, both founded by Claudio Abbado, he was also an Artist-in-Residence and music curator at the Festspielhaus St.Pölten, Austria and served in the jury of the Classical:NEXT conference and the "Junge Ohren Preis".
As a conductor, he has performed with the Orquestra Sinfonica Portuguesa, the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, the North Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and numerous other ensembles.
Etienne initiated Superar Suisse, a start-up that brings music to socially disadvantaged children, is helping to build the “Sistema Europe” network inspired by El Sistema Venezuela and is a founding member of the Impact Hub Zurich. He's a co-founder of the Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra (SEYO) which he conducted together with the Youth Orchestra of Caracas at La Scala Milano in summer 2015.
