Buchmann-Mehta School of Music

The Buchmann-Mehta School of Music (BMSM) is an institute of higher education in Tel Aviv, Israel. The school is a part of the Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University and is operated in collaboration with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO). The school is named after Jewish philanthropist Joseph Buchmann from Frankfurt and conductor Zubin Mehta, Music Director of the IPO. Maestro Mehta is the honorary president of the school and conducts its symphony orchestra regularly in Israel and on tours abroad. The BMSM mission is to train elite young musicians in the realms of performance, composition and research in music and prepare them for professional careers in these fields. The BMSM's orchestral training program is an integral part of the school and aims to educate orchestral musicians to ensure the artistic future of the IPO and other orchestras in Israel.

History

[edit source] The Buchmann-Mehta School of Music was founded in 2005 as a partnership between Tel-Aviv University, the largest and most comprehensive university in Israel, and the IPO, the country`s most prominent music institution. The school's foundation was made possible by the donation of Dr.hc Josef Buchmann and conductor Zubin Mehta, who has been actively involved in the school since its inception. The first head of the school and one of its founders was pianist and pedagogue Prof. Tomer Lev. In 2009 he was succeeded by conductor and bassoonist Prof. Zeev Dorman, who had served as the IPO's principal bassoon player as well as chairman of the orchestra's executive board for nearly 25 years. In August 2015 Prof. Lev resumed his post as head of the BMSM.

The Samuel Rubin Israel Academy of Music (1945-2005)

[edit source] Although inaugurated as late as 2005, the school's roots go back to 1945, when it was originally established as the Israel Academy of Music by senior members of the IPO, who had fled Europe on the brink of World War II. In 1966 it was merged into the newly formed Tel Aviv University and in 1972 became a cornerstone for the university's Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts. The heads of the historical Academy were among the founding fathers of the music world in Israel: violist and composer Ödön Pártos, pianist and conductor Arie Vardi, composers Yehezkel Braun, Yitzhack Sadai and Joseph Dorfman, violinist Yair Kless and composers Ami Maayani and Noam Sheriff.

Structure and Activities

The school is currently composed of the performance department in its various instrumental tracks, the composition and conducting department, the musicology department and the orchestral training program of the IPO. The School is located in the Ramat-Aviv campus of TAU as a unit of the Katz Faculty of the Arts. The BMSM maintains a wide spectrum of performance ensembles, including a full symphony orchestra, an oratorio choir, a chamber choir, an opera ensemble, a contemporary music ensemble, a piano ensemble (MultiPiano) and some 50 other chamber ensembles.

The school building houses two concert halls (Clairmont Hall and Targ Hall) and a well-equipped recording studio. Some 200 concerts, lectures and master classes are held annually, many of these under the BMSM subscription concert series named after the late Yehiel Ben-Zvi, former Vice-President of Tel Aviv University. These events attract more than 2,000 regular subscribers a year as well as numerous visitors, making the BMSM one of the busiest music centers in the country.

Sources

Tel Aviv University Official Website: https://en-arts.tau.ac.il/music/about

Buchmann-Mehta School of Music – History: https://en-arts.tau.ac.il/Music/history