Eileen Wingard

The Israeli pianist, Shai Wosner, shone in Beethoven’s Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3, as he collaborated with violinist, Jeff Thayer, concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and Yao Zhao, the orchestra’s principal cellist. The concert, part of the San Diego Symphony’s celebration of Beethoven’s 250 anniversary of his birthday, featured three of the composer’s early works. It took place on Tuesday evening, January 14, at the new Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on Fay Street in La Jolla. [Eileen Wingard]

Cellist Alisa Wallerstein’s dramatic, passionate playing was well-suited to the demands of Ernest Bloch’s grandiloquent Hebraic Rhapsody for cello and orchestra, Schelomo. In his musical attempt to present a portrait of the Biblical monarch, Bloch strives to reflect “the Jewish soul, the complex, glowing, agitated soul, that I feel vibrating throughout the Bible.” [story by Eileen Wingard]

The multi-talented Strom, scholar-in-residence at SDSU’s Judaic Studies Department, has brought concerts combining his klezmer forces with international musicians from mariachi, and classical to jazz, from an Afghanistan drummer and an Israeli oud player, to a flaminco dancer. This time, the free concert on Thursday evening, November 7, 7:00 p.m. in Smith Recital Hall on the SDSU campus, will be celebrating the intersection of Jews and Blues. [Eileen Wingard]

By Eileen Wingard CORONADO, California — This past weekend, a new music festival was initiated at the Coronado Library, and concert pianist, Gerald Robbins, brother of  longtime Coronado resident, Bonnie Fox, helped launch the concerts by participating in two of them. At 1 p.m. Saturday, September 21, Robbins performed a solo recital on the Coronado

By Eileen Wingard SAN DIEGO — The Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra (TICO) concluded its season with an entertaining Pops Concert under the direction of its founder and conductor, David Amos, and featuring soprano Victoria Robertson. The first half of the program began and ended with two unusual selections, Sousa’s The Fairest of the Fair March,

By Eileen Wingard LA JOLLA, California — It must have been a challenging task for the La Jolla Music Society to find a successor for Summerfest’s former director, violinist Cho-Liang Lin. Taiwanese-born Lin was not only a brilliant violinist with a successful career as a performer, but he proved himself to be a gifted administrator