MICHAEL GUTTMAN

Michael Guttman is a violinist, conductor, and artistic director of music festivals across the world, including Pietrasanta in Concert, Crans Montana Classics, Le Printemps du Violon in Paris, and Made in Polin in Warsaw. He is also music director of the Napa Valley Symphony and the Belgian Chamber Orchestra. He won, in 2014, the prestigious “Scopus” Prize from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for his musical career, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for his album dedicated to Hindemith, recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Guttman is the youngest violinist ever admitted to the Conservatoire Royal in Brussels, which happened when he was only 10 years old. His debut at age 14, with Jean Pierre Rampal, enabled him to meet his future mentor, Isaac Stern, who suggested that he continue his studies at the Juilliard School in New York, where he perfected his skills with Dorothy Delay and the Juilliard Quartet. He studied with legendary Russian violinist Boris Goldstein, in whose honor he organized, together with the Maestro himself and Zakhar Bron, a violin competition in Bern, Switzerland in 2014.

As Belgium’s principal violinist, he was chosen to represent his country at the 1992 World’s Fair in Seville. Concerts at Lincoln Center, Barbican Hall, Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, Salle Pleyel in Paris, and in Asia were followed by invitations to prestigious festivals, such as the Martha Argerich Project, the Flanders Festival, the Jurij Bashmet Festival in Elba, the Folles Journées in Nantes and Tokyo, and the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad. He participated in the premiere performance of Philip Glass’s double concerto for violin and cello with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in the United States and in Asia with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, conducted on both occasions by the great Dutch maestro Jaap Van Zweden. He has toured with, among others, Martha Argerich, Nestor Marconi, Nigel Kennedy, Boris Berezovsky and Vadim Repin.
After collaborating with composers and conductors such as Lukas Foss and Noam Sheriff, he developed a career as a conductor, which led him, in 2017, to perform in Spain’s most prestigious concert halls with legendary pianist Ivo Pogorelich. His meeting with Astor Piazzolla prompted him to explore different styles of tango, and in 2017 he composed the first double concerto for violin and bandoneon with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Juan Pablo Jofre, a famous Argentine bandoneon player.