The Lysander Piano Trio appeared by arrangement with Dinin Arts Management & Consulting.

• Program
• About the Lysander Piano Trio
• About the Artists
  • Itamar Zorman
  • Michael Katz
  • Liza Stepanova

Program

Full Program (PDF)

About the Lysander Piano Trio

The Lysander Piano Trio has been praised by The Strad for its “incredible ensemble, passionate playing, articulate and imaginative ideas and wide palette of colors” and by The Washington Post for “an uncommon degree of heart-on-the-sleeve emotional frankness” and “vivid engagement carried by soaring, ripely Romantic playing.” The group has developed a reputation for exciting programming, finding creative ways to connect well-known masterworks with pieces by lesser-known and underrepresented composers, discovering common threads across cultures and times.

The Trio’s debut recording “After A Dream” (CAG Records) was acclaimed by The New York Times for its “polished and spirited interpretations.” Its most recent album, “Mirrors”, featuring world-premiere recordings of six works the ensemble has commissioned or premiered, was released in early 2021 by First Hand Records.

Formed at The Juilliard School, the Trio studied there with Ronald Copes of the Juilliard String Quartet, the late Joseph Kalichstein and Seymour Lipkin, and had a memorable masterclass with Alfred Brendel. Early in their career, Lysander became a standout at competitions, with top honors at the 2010 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the 2011 Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition (Grand Prize), the 2011 J. C. Arriaga Chamber Music Competition (First Prize), and the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition.

The Trio’s name is inspired by the character in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

About the Artists

Itamar Zorman

Recently awarded the 2014 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and the 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant, violinist Itamar Zorman was awarded a silver medal in the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition. Other competition successes include the first prize and special prize for a performance of a Mozart Concerto at the 2010 International Violin Competition of Freiburg and the Juilliard Berg Concerto Competition in April 2011, which led to his Avery Fisher Hall debut with the Juilliard Orchestra led by the late James DePreist.

Itamar Zorman has performed as a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, Het Gelders Orkest in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Tokyo Symphony in Suntory Hall, Utah Symphony, Polish Radio Chamber Orchestra, Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim, and Orquesta Filharmonica de Cali, amongst others. As a chamber musician, he has appeared at the Lincoln Center, the Zankel and Weill Recital Halls in Carnegie Hall, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. A founding member of the Israeli Chamber Project, Zorman has toured Israel and North America for the past five seasons.

Born in Tel-Aviv in 1985 to a family of musicians, Itamar Zorman began his violin studies at the age of six with Saly Bockel at the Israeli Conservatory of Music in Tel-Aviv. He graduated in 2003 and continued his studies with Professor David Chen and Nava Milo. He received his Bachelor of Music from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance as a student of Hagai Shaham. He received his Master’s of Music from The Juilliard School in 2009, where he studied with Robert Mann and Sylvia Rosenberg, and received an Artist Diploma from Manhattan School of Music in 2010, and an Artist Diploma from Julliard in 2012, studying with Ms. Rosenberg. Itamar Zorman is currently a student of Christian Tetzlaff at The Kronberg Academy.

Itamar Zorman plays on a Pietro Guarneri violin from 1745 from the private collection of Yehuda Zisapel.

Michael Katz

Hailed by the press for his “bold, rich sound” (Strad Magazine) and “nuanced musicianship,” (New York Times) Israeli Cellist Michael Katz has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in venues such as Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Kimmel Center, Oji Hall (Tokyo, Japan), Philips Hall (Eindhoven, Netherlands), Teatro Cervantes (Malaga, Spain), Lucerne KKL (Lucerne, Switzerland), and Henry Crown Auditorium (Jerusalem, Israel). He has performed at music festivals such as Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Yellow Barn, Lucerne, Sarasota, Malaga Clasica, Mostly Mozart, Festival Mozaic, Orford, and Classical Bridge, and has collaborated with conductors such as James DePriest, David Stern, and Dongmin Kim.

His musicianship has been recognized with many awards, among them all three awards at the 2011 Aviv Competition, first prizes at the 2010 Juilliard School’s Concerto Competition, and the 2005 Turjeman Competition, as well as scholarship awards from the America Israel Cultural Foundation and the Ronen Foundation

In demand as a chamber musician, Mr. Katz has collaborated and performed with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Midori, Donald Weilerstein, Anthony Marwood, Peter Frankl, Charles Neidich, Roger Tapping, Lucy Chapman, and Daniel Phillips. He has participated in chamber music programs such as the Steans Institue for Young Artists and the Perlman Music Program.

Deeply committed to community outreach and education, from 2014-2016 Mr. Katz was a Fellow in Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect (formerly known as ACJW). He was previously selected to be part of a special string quartet led by Midori to present formal and outreach concerts in Myanmar and Japan as part of the 2013-2014 International Community Engagement Program, and was invited to return to the program in 2016-2017 for concerts in Nepal and Japan. He is a regular cello and chamber music faculty at the Csehy Summer School of Music and the Chamber Music Institute in Stamford, CT, and was an adjunct professor of cello at Nyack College from 2015-2017.

Born in Tel-Aviv Israel, Mr. Katz began his cello studies at age 7. Among his teachers in Israel were Zvi Plesser, Hillel Zori and the late Mikhail Khomitzer. Mr. Katz received his Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory where he studied with Laurence Lesser, his Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School where he studied with Joel Krosnick, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from SUNY Stony Brook as a student of Colin Carr.

Liza Stepanova

Praised by The New York Times for her “thoughtful musicality” and “fleet-fingered panache,” pianist Liza Stepanova is in demand as a soloist, collaborator, and educator. She has performed extensively in Europe, most recently as a soloist with the Southwest German Philharmonic and in chamber music performances at the Berlin Museum of Musical Instruments and Belgrade’s Kolarac Hall. In the United States, she has appeared in Carnegie Hall’s Weill and Zankel recital halls, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, and Steinway Hall in New York City; at the Kennedy Center and The Smithsonian in Washington, DC, with performances aired by WQXR New York, WFMT Chicago, and WETA Washington.

Stepanova has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at international festivals at Castleton, La Jolla, Music@Menlo, Mostly Mozart, Copenhagen (Denmark), and Davos (Switzerland), where she had opportunities to collaborate with leading artists including violinist Cho-Liang Lin, violist James Dunham, clarinetist Charles Neidich, soprano Lucy Shelton and mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer. Deeply committed to new music, she has premiered works by Jennifer Higdon and Libby Larsen and worked with composers William Bolcom, Gabriela Lena Frank, and John Harbison.

Liza Stepanova studied art song collaboration with Wolfram Rieger in Berlin and was invited by the late Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau to perform in several of his master classes including the Hugo-Wolf-Tage festival in Austria. Since 2010, Stepanova has been on the faculty at SongFest at The Colburn School in Los Angeles and also served as the festival’s Associate Artistic Director and Piano Program Director for two years.

Stepanova received her DMA from The Juilliard School with a Richard F. French Award for an outstanding dissertation. Previously a graduate of the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin, Germany, she studied with Joseph Kalichstein, Seymour Lipkin, Jerome Lowenthal, and George Sava, and performed in master classes for Alfred Brendel, Daniel Barenboim and András Schiff. Following teaching positions at The Juilliard School and Smith College, she is currently an assistant professor of piano at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia.