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The Israeli harpsichordist, pianist and musicologist, Tamar Halperin, grew up in Israel and first pursued a career as a tennis player. She studied music at the Tel Aviv University and continued her studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with a focus on historically informed performance. She made her PhD at the Juilliard School in New York City on J.S. Bach (2009). She is a recipient of the AICF Fellowship (1998-2000) and an honorary prize winner at the Van Vlaanderen Musica Antiqua Brugge Competition (2004), the Presser Award (2005), the REC Music Award (2006) and the Eisen-Picard Performing Arts Award ( 2006 and 2007).
While the focus of her activities is Baroque music, Tamar Halperin is also an enthusiastic performer of classical and contemporary music. With repertoire that ranges over five centuries, she performed as a soloist and with various chamber groups in Europe, the USA, Israel, Mexico, Japan, Korea and Australia. She has appeared in venues such as Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York, London’s Wigmore Hall, Paris’s Salle Gaveau, Musashino Hall in Tokyo, Sydney Recital Hall, Barcelona’s Liceu, Berlin’s Konzerthaus and Berghain Club, and has participated in festivals such as Bachfest Leipzig; Köthener Bach Festtage, Le Festival Bach de Montréal, Schubertiade Vorarlberg; Jazz Baltica; Rheigau Musik Festival; Norway’s Bergen Festival, and Musica Viva Australia, among others.
Tamar Halperin has collaborated with distinguished musicians and ensembles, including Andreas Scholl, Laurence Cummings, Michael Wollny, Idan Raichel, Jim McNeely, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, The English Concert Baroque orchestra, and the HR jazz big band orchestra. She conducted from the harpsichord the Podium Festival Orchestra, The English Concert, and the Cape Town String Exchange ensemble. She has been composing, arranging, and performing popular, jazz, electronic, and new classical music, some of which appears on Act and Garage labels. In 2011, she played works by J.S. Bach on the harpsichord at the Baroque Christophoruskirche in Wiesbaden-Schierstein, as part of the Rheingau Musik Festival. She played harpsichord and celesta with Wollny at the Jazzfest Bonn 2016.
Tamar Halperin recorded with the jazz pianist Michael Wollny the album "Wunderkammer" which was awarded the ECHO Jazz in the category piano album in 2010. She recorded a sequel, "Wunderkammer XXL", with Wollny and the hr-Bigband which was awarded the Echo Jazz in the category big band. She recorded in 2012 Lieder by Haydn, W.A. Mozart, Schubert und Johannes Brahms with her husband, the counter-tenor Andreas Scholl, titled "Wanderer" (Decca). The reviewer of a similar program at Wigmore Hall noted in The Guardian that she "proved to be a wonderfully subtle accompanist and a performer of real distinction", offering piano works by W.A. Mozart and J. Brahms in addition to the songs. In 2016 she published on Neue Meister label an album with music by Erik Satie on the occasion of his 150th anniversary of birth, played on different keyboard instruments including, besides piano and harpsichord, hammond organ and Wurlitzer piano.
The Hessian Cultural Prize 2016 was awarded to both Tamar Halperin and Andreas Scholl by Volker Bouffier, the Minister-president of Hesse. Michael Herrmann spoke in his laudation about both artists as crossing borders. |
