Date: August 21, 2009
Contact: Carol Connelly, Director,
Media & Communication Services, ext. 5267, cconnelly@pnc.edu
September 13 Sinai Forum Features Martin Chalifour
The 56th season of the Sinai Forum Presented by Purdue University North Central will open on Sept. 13 at 3 p.m. at Elston Middle School , 317 Detroit Street , in Michigan City with Martin Chalifour, principal concertmaster for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, presenting a one-of- a-kind event with the Sylvia Bankoff Memorial Concert.
The award-winning Chalifour will pay tribute to the Forum founder in what will be his second performance before the Forum. For this event he will be accompanied on the piano by John Blacklow. This program is sponsored by the Bankoff Endowment for the Forum.
Chalifour also serves as a professor at the University of Southern California 's Thornton School of Music. He graduated with honors from the Montreal Conservatory at age 18 and moved to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis Institute of Music.
His orchestral career began in 1984 with the late Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony, playing as associate concertmaster for six years. He later held the same position for five years in the Cleveland Orchestra, where he also served as acting concertmaster under Christoph von Dohnányi. In Cleveland he taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music and was a founding member of two chamber ensembles, Myriad and the Cleveland Orchestra Piano Trio.
In 1986 Chalifour received a Certificate of Honor at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and was a laureate of the Montreal International Competition the following year. Since then he has played hundreds of performances from a repertoire of more than 50 works. He has appeared as soloist with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir Neville Marriner and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Outside the U.S., he has been a guest soloist with the Auckland Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the National Orchestra of Taiwan and the Malaysian Philharmonic, among others.
He returns to his native Quebec to teach and appear as soloist with the Quebec Symphony. Chalifour and two Philharmonic colleagues, Joanne Pearce Martin and Peter Stumpf, recently formed the Los Angeles Philharmonic Piano Trio. He has been principal concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 1995.
Forum s ubscription tickets are $75 for regular tickets, $125 for donor tickets and $150 for patron tickets. Subscription tickets may be purchased in person from the PNC Office of Advancement, located in the Technology Building, Room 101 on the Westville campus; Michigan City Public Library, Kabelin Hardware, 512 Andrews Ave., LaPorte and at PNC - Porter County, 600 Vale Park Road, Valparaiso. Subscriptions may be purchased via credit card by calling the PNC Advancement Office at (219) 785-5697. Any student with a valid ID will be admitted free.
Additional information about the Sinai Forum Presented by Purdue University North Central is available at www.sinaiforum.org.
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