Alexander Fiterstein to Play Merkin Concert Hall, 11/25

Clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein will join conductor Vladimir Lande and the Washington Soloists Chamber Orchestra for a performance of Sean Hickey's Clarinet Concerto in what will be Mr. Fiterstein's first live performance of the concerto in North America after recording the piece for the 2013 album Sean Hickey: Concertos. Also on the program is Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 performed by Xiayin Wang as part of her five-concert series at Merkin Concert Hall. The concert will take place at Merkin Hall in the Kaufman Music Center on Monday, November 25 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available through the Kaufman Music Center website at www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch or by calling 212.501.3330.

Sean Hickey: Concertos, which was released on the DELOS label in 2013, features Mr. Fiterstein's performance of the Clarinet Concerto with Mr. Lande and the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Fiterstein gave the Russian premiere performance with Mr. Lande in the Grand Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in November 2011. Mr. Fiterstein's debut concerto album featuring both of Carl Maria von Weber's clarinet concertos recorded with Martin West and the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra was released on October 1, 2013 on the Bridge label.

In the 2013-14 season Mr. Fiterstein will perform with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Daedalus Quartet, the IRIS Orchestra, the Minnesota Sinfonia, and will travel to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to perform chamber music. He will perform at the Kennedy Center with his ensemble, the Zimro Project, in a concert of rarely performed Russian Jewish chamber music, and he will perform with his Goldstein-Peled-Fiterstein trio for University of Chicago Presents and the Civic Music Association in Iowa. Mr. Fiterstein was also named Co-Artistic Director of the new Sedona Winter Musicfest, taking place in January in Carefree, Arizona.

Mr. Fiterstein was born in Belarus. At the age of two, he immigrated with his family to Israel where he later studied at the Israel Arts and Science Academy. He graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Juilliard School. Mr. Fiterstein is recipient of the 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant, a first prize winner of the Carl Nielsen International Clarinet Competition and the "Aviv" competitions in Israel; a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions; and he is the recipient of the Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award (Tokyo) and numerous awards from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. Mr. Fiterstein is the clarinet professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.