City: Guitarist and composer Nadav Lev is an exceptional virtuoso on both classical and electric guitar. His proficiency in through-composed as well as improvised music and his inspired, profound performances of the music of our time have made him one of today’s most captivating new performers. An Andres Segovia Award winner (Musica en Compostela, Spain), Lev’s Carnegie Hall debut was hailed by Classical Guitar Magazine as “sensitive and nuanced performance … talented and engagingly musical … his stage presence is entirely gracious and personable.” Classical Guitar Magazine described Nadav’s debut album as “a CD to savor and delight in. His playing is of the utmost authority … a sheer delight from start to finish.”
An Israeli native based in NYC, Nadav was the only guitarist to recently win the America-Israel Cultural Foundation’s prestigious Abroad Studies award, and he also won the Ra’anana Guitar Competition’s first prize, the Jerusalem Guitar Competition’s Rodrigo Prize, Artists International and the Lillian Fuchs Awards.
Mr. Lev has been performing throughout the US, Europe, Israel and South America, in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Rose Hall at Lincoln Center and Merkin Concert Hall in New York, Oscar Peterson Hall in Montreal and in festivals such as Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart, Musique en Graves and Chaillol in France to name a few. He was invited to give recitals in prestigious concert series such as the John Marlow Guitar series in Washington D.C. and has performed with groups such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon Le Zion and the Israel Kibbutz Orchestra. Lev’s planned appearances as of this recording’s release include his debut as a soloist with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, performing a new concerto dedicated to him by composer Ayal Adler. Among Lev’s recent collaborations are mezzo soprano Rinat Shaham, Klezmatics founders Frank London and Alicia Svigals, double bassist Remy Yulzari, mandolin player Avi Avital, harpist Sivan Magen, bandoneon master Raul Jaurena (Piazzolla’s double concerto) and composer/sound artist Guy Barash. Recent engagements include tours in France, Canada and a residency at the Chaillol Festival in France, featuring Lev in solo and chamber music recitals as well as new commissions by him. Nadav has also been performing extensively with his Lev-Yulzari duo, which recently released its debut album Azafea with the French IEMJ label, featuring guest artists Frank London and John Hadfield, and gaining rave reviews.
Nadav is a 2013-14 LABA fellow at NYC’s 14th Street Y, for which he composed Shomeret Layla (“the Night Watcher”), to his own text. His original compositions for various ensembles and for theater have been performed in the US and Israel, including the International Asian Music Festival at the YMCA Jerusalem hall. His frequently appears in media in North america, Europe and Israel.
Lev holds a Master of Music from the Manhattan School of Music, a BM Cum Laude in composition from the Rubin Academy in Tel-Aviv and a BA in Philosophy from Tel-Aviv University. He studied guitar with Ruben Seroussi, David Starobin and David Leisner; also composition with Seroussi and Itzhak Sadai.
Nadav Lev was born in kibbutz Nachshon, Israel, and began playing jazz guitar at the age of nine. After graduating with honors from the Jazz Department at the Thelma Yelin High School for the Arts, he went on to join Israel’s Air Force Orchestra as a guitarist, turning later to classical guitar and composition. Lev’s many years of engagement with Jazz, Rock and a wide range of other musical as well as intellectual interests allowed him to bring to classical and contemporary music an expressive, knowledgeable, edgy and utterly personal voice.
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