Russian native and world-class viola player Yuri Gandelsman is heading up a new chamber group at Michigan State University (MSU) called Ad Libitum.
According to excerpts from the article:
Gandelsman, 57, is one of the world’s great viola players and a larger-than-life teacher with a strong gravitational field. Soon after he joined the MSU faculty last fall, a student chamber ensemble began to coalesce around him.
That seems to happen a lot to Gandelsman. The Russian native put together his first such ensemble at age 15, while studying in Moscow.
“We did it for half a year, until the professor said, ‘All of you have to go practice,’” he recalled with a smile.
After rising to the top of his profession in the former Soviet Union, Gandelsman immigrated to Israel in 1990.
Read the entire article here.
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