Join us on Saturday, September 2, 2023 at 3:00 pm to enjoy a performance of music for clarinet and piano.

• Program
• About the Artists
  • Yasmina Spiegelberg
  • Sophiko Simsive

Program

About the Artists

Yasmina Spiegelberg

Swiss-French clarinetist Yasmina Spiegelberg is the laureate of several international and national competitions including the Rotary International Competition Madrid Velazquez, the Frances Walton Seattle Competition, and the USC Concerto Competition. Additionally, she was awarded the Special Prize at the 2nd Vienna International Music Competition, and the Golden Medal at the 4th Manhattan International Music Competition. Her clarinet trio, The Tandru Trio, was the winner at the Beverly Hills National Auditions in 2019. She is also a member of the preeminent woodwind quintet, ConnectFive, which has been heard across the Northeast, invited at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and is an Ensemble Forward Grantee through Chamber Music America.

Based in NYC, she is currently a fellow at Ensemble Connect, the resident ensemble of Carnegie Hall, which features extraordinary young musicians from around the globe who are committed to community engagement, teaching, entrepreneurship, and leadership. She has appeared in many renowned concert halls including the Oslo Concert Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and Carnegie Hall.

She holds a Bachelor’s from the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne (Switzerland) and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (The Netherlands), as well as a Master in Performance from the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo with Björn Nyman. She also earned a Graduate Certificate and an Artist Diploma from the University of Southern California with world-famous Professor Yehuda Gilad.

Sophiko Simsive

Georgian pianist Sophiko Simsive began piano lessons with her mother at age three. While still a child, she was invited to perform the Beethoven 2nd concerto at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, leading eventually to a concert tour throughout the Netherlands, as soloist with the I Virtuosi Italiani under Lev Markiz in Rotterdam, Utrecht, Leiden, and Groningen.

Sophiko won both the 1st Prize and the Audience prize at the Princess Christina Competition in Holland. While a student there, she also won top prizes in competitions in Amsterdam (Yamaha, Grachtenfestival, and The Young Pianists Foundation), in Utrecht, and in Italy. More recently, Sophiko won piano concerto competitions at Yale, the Music Academy of the West, and the Manhattan School of Music.

Sophiko’s undergraduate studies began under Mila Baslavskaja at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. After graduating cum laude with a BM degree, she studied with Jacques Rouvier at Universität der Künste. Sophiko earned MM and MMA degrees at the Yale School of Music under Boris Berman and is currently working on a doctorate at the Manhattan School of Music under the direction of Solomon Mikowsky.