Press Release
For Immediate Release:
September 28, 2005
Violinist Miriam Fried to Become Full-time Faculty at New England Conservatory
Soloist, Chamber Musician, Teacher Expands Commitment to NEC
Violinist Miriam Fried, who has taught part time at New England Conservatory since 2003, will join the full-time faculty beginning with the 2006-07 academic year. Fried will leave the School of Music at Indiana University where she has taught since 1986, is Professor of Music and holds the prestigious Dorothy Richards Starling Chair in Violin Studies.
A graduate of the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv and former student of Josef Gingold and Ivan Galamian, Fried won first prize in the Queen Elisabeth International competition in 1971 (the first woman to do so) and the Paganini International Violin Competition in 1968. Since 1993, she has held the post of Artistic Director of the Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival, and since 1999 has been first violinist of the Mendelssohn String Quartet.
As a soloist, Fried has appeared with major orchestras all over the world, including the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Symphony, and the London Symphony, London Philharmonia, and Royal Philharmonic. She has also given recitals in Carnegie Hall and throughout North America and Europe.
This past summer at the Ravinia Festival, Fried joined Pinchas Zukerman, conductor James Conlon, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the Bach Concerto in D-minor for Two Violins that the Chicago Tribune described as “an easy give-and-take between old friends Zukerman and the sensitive Fried.” She also soloed with the CSO and Conlon in an all-Tchaikovsky program. She played the Violin Concerto while Olga Kern took on the Piano Concerto No. 1. Wynne Delacoma, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times commented: “Violinist Miriam Fried, was the soloist in the Violin Concerto, playing with the brio and darkly luminous tone Ravinia audiences have come to expect from her.”
As a chamber musician, Fried has enjoyed a long association with the Marlboro Festival and in April she and her pianist son Jonathan Biss took part in a concert honoring the 75th birthday of pianist Luis Batlle, a Marlboro Festival and Marlboro College stalwart.
Fried has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Columbia, Finlandia, and Lyrinx.
For more information, call the NEC Concert Line at (617) 585-1122 or visit NEC on the web at www.newenglandconservatory.edu/faculty
ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY
Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.
The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.
NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, many of them in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.
NEC is co-founder and educational partner of “From the Top,” a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by more than two hundred stations throughout the United States.