125 Arie Vardi received the Minister of Education award in Israel in 2004 for his lifetime achievement, as well as the 2017 “Israel Prize”. His RCA recordings including Mozart’s Triple Piano Concerto with Yefim Bronfman, Radu Lupu and Zubin Mehta have won international acclaim and prizes. Taiseer Elias (Israel) A lecturer and educator, composer, master of both Eastern and Western music, oud and violin artist Taiseer Elias performs worldwide. Prof. Elias is the head of the Music Department at the University of Haifa (Israel), and the music director and conductor of the Arab-Jewish Orchestra. He is the founder/conductor of the first Orchestra of classical Arabic Music in Israel, and the music director and conductor of the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra - Ashdod. Elias has recorded with a number of ensembles including White Bird, Bustan Abraham, Ziryab Trio (of which he is the musical director), Menachem Wiesenberg and Tabea Zimmermann (“The Malta Concert” – Classics Live) and others. His Ph.D. deals with “The Latent Regularity in Improvisation of Instrumental Arab Music (Taqasim) in Israel, in Terms of Learned and Natural Schemata”. In 2002 Elias performed at the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona for 250,000 people which was broadcast all over the world; and in 2004 he performed in the French Senate under the auspices of its President, Mr. Christian Poncelet. He has performed with great artists such as Isaac Stern, Ravi Shankar, Ivry Gitlis, János Starker, Itzhak Perlman, Paco de Lucia, as well as Tabea Zimmermann, Menachem Wiesenberg, Zakir Hussain, and Hariprasad Chaurasia, with whom he has also made recordings. Prof. Elias has performed on the oud works by Vivaldi, Bach and Pagnini with different orchestras as well as works by contemporary American and Israeli composers, most notably Menachem Wiesenberg, Michael Wolpe, Joel Hofmann, Miriam Gerberg who have composed concerti for oud and orchestra especially for him, and the American composer Joel Hoffman who has composed a double concerto for oud, cello and symphonic orchestra which was performed with the “Madison Symphony Orchestra” in March 2008. In April 2008 he performed as a soloist with the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra; giving recitals and conducting classes in Middle Eastern music theory and practice in the UC Davis Music Department. He was awarded the Frank Peleg Prize for Israeli Performers (2008), the Würth Musical Award in Germany, and the Minister of Culture Award for lifetime achievement in the field of music (2017). Jury Members
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