Itzhak Perlman Coming to Cedar Falls

Celebrated violinist Itzhak Perlman will be in concert Sunday, November 8th at the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center in Cedar Falls. The Marion-East Cedar Rapids Rotary Club will be charting a bus to this performance. If you do not yet have a ticket, please contact President Jill Olsen regarding additional availability. This concert will sell-out, so if you have any interest in the handful of remaining tickets, you must move quick. More details on the evening are stated below:

2:30 - Chartered bus to leave from Marion School Parking Lot, 777 South 13th Street (south side of administration building)

3:30 - Social Hour at Maucker Union, UNI Campus

5:00 - Rotary Foundation Dinner & Program featuring Dr. Robert Scott, Rotary International Chair: Polio Plus

7:30 - Performance at Gallagher Bludorn

10:00 - Bus Returns to Marion

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Itzhak Perlman was born in Tel Aviv, where he first became interested in the violin when he heard a classical music performance on the radio. He studied at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv before moving to the United States to study at the Juilliard School with the great violin pedagogue, Ivan Galamian, and his assistant Dorothy DeLay. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall in 1963 and won the prestigious Leventritt Competition in 1964. Soon afterward he began to tour extensively. In addition to an extensive recording career, he has made occasional guest appearances on American television, starting in the 1970s on shows such as The Tonight Show and Sesame Street, as well as playing at a number of functions at the White House.

Perlman contracted polio at the age of four. He made a good recovery, learning to walk with the use of crutches. Today, he generally uses crutches or an Amigo POV/Scooter for mobility and plays the violin while seated..

In 1987, he joined the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for their concerts in Warsaw and Budapest , as well as other Eastern bloc countries. He toured with the IPO in the spring of 1990 for their first-ever performance in the Soviet Union , with concerts in Moscow and Leningrad , and toured with the IPO again in 1994, performing in China and India.

While primarily a solo artist, Perlman has performed with a number of other notable musicians, including Yo-Yo Ma , Jessye Norman , Isaac Stern , and Yuri Temirkanov at the 150th anniversary celebration of Tchaikovsky in Leningrad in December 1990. He has also performed (and recorded) with good friend and fellow Israeli violinist Pinchas Zukerman on numerous occasions over the years.

Perlman plays on the antique Soil Stradivarius violin of 1714, considered to be one of the finest violins made during Stradivari's "golden period", as well as the Sauret Guarneri del Gesu of c.1743.

In recent years, Perlman has also begun to conduct , taking the post of principal guest conductor at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra . He served as music advisor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra from 2002-2004. In November, 2007, the Westchester Philharmonic announced the appointment of Perlman as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor. His first concert in these roles was on October 11, 2008, in an all- Beethoven program featuring pianist Leon Fleisher performing the Emperor Concerto .

Perlman also teaches, and in 1975 took a faculty post at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College . In 2003, Mr. Perlman was named the holder of the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Chair in Violin Studies at the Juilliard School, succeeding his teacher, Dorothy DeLay.

Perlman played during the entertainment at the state dinner attended by Queen Elizabeth II on May 7, 2007, in the East Room at the White House . He performed John Williams ' " Air and Simple Gifts " at the 2009 inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama , along with Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Gabriela Montero (piano) and Anthony McGill (clarinet). The quartet played along with a recording they had made of themselves two days earlier, since string instruments cannot reliably stay in tune in subfreezing temperatures.