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MIRIAM FRIED,
violin
Born in Romania, Miriam Fried emigrated to
Israel with her family at age , where she be-
gan taking violin lessons as a child with Alice
Fenyves in Tel Aviv. While there she had the
opportunity to meet and play for many of the
world’s great violinists, such as Isaac Stern, Na-
than Milstein, and Yehudi Menuhin. Stern en-
couraged her to study abroad and, a er brie y
attending the Geneva Conservatory under
Fenyves’s brother, she became a student of Jo-
sef Gingold at Indiana University and later Ivan
Galamian at
e Juilliard School. While under
Galamian’s tutelage, Fried won her rst com-
petition, the
Paganini Contest in Genoa.
ree years later she claimed the grand prize
in the Queen Elisabeth International Competi-
tion in Brussels, becoming the rst woman to
win the award. Fried has been a regular guest
of nearly every major orchestra in the world,
including the Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Vi-
enna, and London Symphony Orchestras; the
Cleveland, Paris, and Philadelphia Orchestras;
and the Israel, (London) Royal, New York, Los
Angeles, Czech, Berlin, and Saint Petersburg
Philharmonics. She has recently appeared on
recordings by the Grand Rapids Symphony,
performing a violin concerto written for her by
Donald Erb that she premiered with the same
ensemble, and the Helsinki Philharmonic, play-
ing Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. For much of
,
Fried focused intensive study on Bach’s Sonatas
and Partitas for Solo Violin, creating a series of
online lectures and master classes for iClassical
Academy. She toured the monumental works
from Ravinia to Boston, Israel, Canada, and
Europe, and made a new recording of them this
past December. She played rst violin for the
Mendelssohn String Quartet until it disbanded
in
and is currently on the faculty of New
England Conservatory. e director of Ravinia’s
Steans Music Institute Program for Piano and
Strings since
and the recipient of Ravin-
ia’s inaugural Edward Gordon Award, Miriam
Fried made her rst appearance at the festival in
. Tonight marks her th season performing
at Ravinia, and she will return to the stage on
July as a soloist with the CSO.
PAMELA FRANK,
violin
Winner of the Avery Fisher Prize in
, Pame-
la Frank began studying the violin at age , and
a er years as a pupil of Shirley Givens contin-
ued her studies at the Curtis Institute with Szy-
mon Goldberg and Jaime Laredo. Since launch-
ing her performing career in
at Carnegie
Hall, Frank has been a soloist with top ensem-
bles around the world, including the New York,
Los Angeles, Saint Petersburg, and Berlin Phil-
harmonics; Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Dallas,
Houston, (US) National, and Vienna Symphony
Orchestras; Cleveland, Minnesota, and Paris
Orchestras; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields;
San Francisco Symphony; French National Or-
chestra; and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
She has also performed extensively with David
Zinman and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra,
recording Mozart’s complete violin concertos
with the ensemble, and in
she performed
the world premiere of a new concerto by Ellen
Taa e Zwilich, commissioned for her by Carn-
egie Hall with Hugh Wol and the Orchestra of
St. Luke’s. Frank has also premiered two works
by Aaron Jay Kernis, his
Lament and Prayer
for violin and orchestra and his piano quartet
Still Movement with Hymn
. Her chamber mu-
sic partners have included pianists Peter Serkin
and Emanuel Ax, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and clar-
inetist Richard Stolzman, as well as her father,
pianist Claude Frank, with whom she recorded
Beethoven’s complete violin sonatas and an all-
Schubert disc. She has also recorded Chopin’s
Piano Trio and Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with
Ax and Ma for Sony Classical, and Brahms’s
complete violin sonatas with Serkin for Dec-
ca. Frank regularly appears with the Chamber
Music Society of Lincoln Center and Musicians
from Marlboro ensembles, as well as at such
festivals as Aldeburgh, Verbier, Edinburgh, Sal-
zburg, Tanglewood, Marlboro, and Ravinia. She
has been on the Curtis Institute faculty since
, and since
she has been artistic direc-
tor of Evnin Rising Stars, a mentoring program
at Caramoor. Pamela Frank joined the faculty of
Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute in
, and to-
night marks her eighth season performing at the
festival, where she debuted in
.
PAUL BISS,
viola
Violist and violinist Paul Biss is an alumnus of
Indiana University, where he received a bach-
elor’s degree and studied with Josef Gingold,
and
e Juilliard School, completing a master’s
degree under the tutelage of Ivan Galamian.
He has also studied chamber music with such
artists as Walter Trampler, Claus Adam, Janos
Starker, and William Primrose. For many years
Biss was a member of the Berkshire String
Quartet, which was in residence at Indiana
University, and has appeared at many music
festivals, including Ravinia, Marlboro, La Jolla,
Lockenhaus, Naantali, Casals, and the Ysaye
at London’s Wigmore Hall. As both a violinist
and violist, he has collaborated with Christoph
Eschenbach, Menahem Pressler, Gidon Kremer,
Pinchas Zukerman, Miriam Fried, Michael Tree,
Janos Starker, Ralph Kirshbaum, and Gary Ho -
man, as well as the Mendelssohn, Fine Arts, and
Alexander String Quartets. Biss has also reg-
ularly appeared in recital and as a soloist with
orchestras in North America, Europe and Israel,
with recent concerts taking him to Brazil and
Korea. He became a professor at Indiana Uni-
versity’s Jacobs School of Music in
and has
conducted approximately
performances of
symphonic music as well as operas for the
school’s opera program before retiring from the
position in
. Biss has also led orchestras in
Mexico, Finland, Brazil, Korea, and Israel, where
he was awarded a prize by the Ministry of Cul-
ture for the performance of contemporary work.
Previously the assistant conductor of the Akron
Symphony, he is also a former faculty member
of MIT and the universities of Tel Aviv and Ak-
ron, and has held a professorship of violin and
chamber music at the New England Conserva-
tory since
. Paul Biss joined Ravinia’s Ste-
ans Music Institute faculty in
, and tonight
marks his nd season as a performer at the
festival.
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