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Chairman of the jury
Arie Van Lysebeth
Belgium, °
Arie Van Lysebeth was the President of the Jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition from to He took up the violin at the age of four. He completed his higher education at the Brussels Conservatory in music theory, bassoon, chamber music, and orchestral conducting. Following a competition, he was appointed bassoon soloist of the Belgian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra. Two years later, he came joint first in the Prague International Bassoon Contest. He also studied conducting under Bruno Maderna in Salzburg and under Pierre Boulez in Switzerland. Starting in , he conducted the Flemish Chamber Orchestra, both in Belgium and abroad. As a guest conductor, he has appeared with the major Belgian orchestras as well as with symphony orchestras in the United States of America, Argentina, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany. He has performed with many famous soloists, including Igor Oistrakh, José Van Dam, Murray Perahia, and Augustin Dumay. From to he was the regular conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the Brussels Conservatory, where he taught chamber music for many years () and served as director (). From to , he was the artistic director of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.
More infoPierre Amoyal
Pierre Amoyal won First Prize in the violin at the Paris Conservatory at the age of At 17 he moved to study in Los Angeles under Jascha Heifetz, with whom he played chamber music and made his first recordings. Five years later he was playing all over Europe and in Japan, performing with the most prestigious orchestras and the greatest conductors (including P. Boulez, S. Ozawa, C. Dutoit, G. Herbig, L. Maazel, K. Sanderling, and M.W. Chung). His many recordings for Decca have included Fauré’s sonatas, the Chausson Concert, and the Franck sonata, as well as the Dutilleux, Saint-Saëns, and Respighi concertos. Appointed a professor at the Conservatoire National in Paris at a very young age, h
The U.S. Army Strings, a premier ensemble of the U.S. Armed Forces, provide a musical backdrop for many of the country’s most notable events. Their mission is to serve as musical ambassadors for high-level military and government events at home and abroad, as well as in concert for public audiences. The Soldiers who comprise this ensemble have been trained at the most prestigious music conservatories and universities in the country. This versatile ensemble performs as The U.S. Army Strolling Strings, in mixed chamber ensembles, and as The U.S. Army Orchestra.
The U.S. Army Strolling Strings are one of the most requested musical ensembles by our nation’s military leadership. Since its inception during the Eisenhower administration, the group has provided musical entertainment at the White House for every president. Missions include performing for the Department of Defense, the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court, kings, queens, and heads of state from countries worldwide. The Strolling Strings offer audiences the unique perspective of being within the ensemble as Soldiers elegantly move about the venue playing their instruments. The Strolling Strings offer a wide array of memorized repertoire, including patriotic, classical, international, jazz, Broadway, bluegrass, and exclusive music arrangements for special guests and events.
Chamber music is a core element of The U.S. Army Strings’ mission. String quartets provide a backdrop for significant official functions as well as public performances. Duos, trios, quartets, and mixed chamber ensembles perform in venues throughout the National Capital Region.
The U.S. Army Strings join with Soldiers from other elements of The U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” to form The U.S. Army Orchestra. This group performs musical works from a diverse repertoire at some of the nation’s finest venues, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, Lincoln Center in New York City, the Music Center a Igor Pikayzen Twenty-five-year-old Russian-American violinist Igor Pikayzen is quickly building a reputation as one of the most promising young artists of his generation. Winner of the most recent edition of the Tadeusz Wroński International Violin Competition, Pikayzen enjoys a multifaceted international career as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. Praised by critics and audiences alike on four continents for his rare musical maturity and astounding technical ability, Igor Pikayzen is "surely at the forefront of an incredible musical career" (Moscow Times). Since his concerto debut at age eight, with Mozart's Violin Concerto No.2 and the Ankara Philharmonic, Pikayzen has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras, spanning Europe, Asia, and North and South America, including the Moscow Philharmonic, Moscow Radio Symphony, Bucharest Philharmonic, Istanbul Philharmonic, Taiwan Chamber Orchestra, Eastern Festival Symphony Orchestra, Filharmonia di Bacau, Czestochowa Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony, Bialystok Philharmonic, Milano Chamber Orchestra, Ridgefield Symphony, Kielce Philharmonic and many others. He has appeared in the most illustrious concert halls, including Carnegie Hall in New York, Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, President's Hall in Ankara, Taipei Concert Hall in Taiwan, Chopin Academy Hall in Warsaw, Morse Recital Hall in New Haven, Minor Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, and Flagey in Brussels as well as Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fischer Hall at Lincoln Center. Pikayzen has also performed on live radio broadcasts for Radio Kultura, RTBF and WQXR. In addition to a long-standing violin-piano duo with his mother, Chopin Competition prize-winner Tatyana Pikayzen, Pikayzen is a keen lover of chamber music and has been blessed with an array of wonderful chamber music partners and mentors. He has worked or collaborated with such artists  New York-based Harlem Quartet, currently quartet-in-residence at the John J. Cali School of Music and the Royal College of Music in London, has been praised for its &#;panache&#; by The New York Times and hailed in the Cincinnati Enquirer for “bringing a new attitude to classical music, one that is fresh, bracing and intelligent.” It has also won plaudits from such veteran musicians as GRAMMY-winning woodwind virtuoso Ted Nash of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, who declared in a May Playbill article, “Harlem Quartet is one of the greatest string quartets I have ever heard. They can play anything.” Since its public debut at Carnegie Hall in , the ensemble has thrilled audiences and students in 47 states as well as in the U.K., France, Belgium, Brazil, Panama, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, Ethiopia, and South Africa. Harlem Quartet has three distinctive characteristics: diverse programming that combines music from the standard string quartet canon with jazz, Latin, and contemporary works; a collaborative approach to performance that is continually broadening the ensemble’s repertoire and audience reach through artistic partnerships with other musicians from the classical and jazz worlds; and an ongoing commitment to residency activity and other forms of educational outreach. The quartet’s mission is to advance diversity in classical music, engaging young and new audiences through the discovery and presentation of varied repertoire that includes works by composers of color. Passion for this work has made the quartet a leading ensemble in both educational and community engagement activities. In this capacity, the quartet has written several successful grants, including a Cultural Connections Artist-In-Residence grant from James Madison University and a Guarneri String Quartet grant from Chamber Music America; the latter allowed the quartet to participate in an extended performance and educational residency in Mobil
Igor Pikayzen
Graduate Teaching Fellow, Violin,
String Studio Class Director
About Harlem Quartet