Join us for a Yom Yerushalayim musical tribute with the acclaimed musicians Gersh Chervinsky (Violin), Irina Kats (Piano) and Ian Pomerantz (Voice). The concert will revolve around Jerusalem – music from the past and the present. 

Gersh Chervinsky is a professional concert violinist and violin teacher based in Rockville, Maryland. He is the second-award winner of the Cremona Festival and Competition (Italy, 2012), and was a participant in the London Purcell School Music Festival (England, 2013), and the Keshet Eilon Festival (Israel, 2019). Gersh collaborates with the Washington Bach Consort, Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, and the Apollo Orchestra as the Associate Concertmaster. Trained at the Moscow Conservatory, Jacobs School of Music, and Peabody Institute of Music, he exhibits the finest traditions of modern and baroque violin playing. Gersh is an enthusiastic educator with extensive teaching experience. He has taught college students at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music as an associate instructor of violin. Currently, he is a string faculty member at The European Academy of Arts and maintains his private studio in Rockville, MD. He has performed with star musicians such as Joshua Bell, Norman Kreeger, Sarah Daneshpour, Amit Peled and others. 

Pianist Irina Kats enjoys a career as a teacher, soloist, chamber musician and accompanist. Ms. Kats' career began in her native Russia, where she graduated with honors, studying with the great pianist and teacher Vasily Pavlov, from the Astrakhan Conservatory and the Kazan Post-Graduate Music School. During her time in Russia, Ms. Kats was an active piano performer with a broad repertoire that included classical, romantic and contemporary masterpieces of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt Moussorgsky, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev. In 1996, Ms. Kats came to the United States where she taught privately before taking a position at Levine Music in Washington, DC in 1998. Since joining Levine's piano faculty, she has resumed her performance career as a chamber musician and accompanist, performing throughout the Northeast region of the United States. She has collablorated with such musicians as Slovakian sopranos Eva Blagove and Sisa Sclovsk, chellist John Gevorkian, horn soloist Eric Rusk and baritone Jerome Barry in such venues as the Austrian Slovakian Embassies, The Lyceum in Alexandria, VA and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Ian Pomerantz, praised for his versatility, the “especially brilliant” (Arts Fuse) “luminous bass-baritone” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), baroque musician, scholar, and cantorial soloist  is “the possessor of a remarkable instrument naturally at home in many genres.” Ian is a passionate storyteller, serving diverse communities in the present through the music of the past. A specialist in the Baroque bass repertoire and an expert in the performance of secular, religious, art, and folk music from the Jewish Diaspora, Ian has been a soloist with The Washington Bach Consort, The Boston Early Music Festival Opera, Byron Schenkman & Friends, Blue Hill Bach, The Handel and Haydn Society, Cantata Singers, Master-works Chorale, The City Choir of Washington, The Cambridge Chorus, and many more. Ian can also be heard in the role of Pan in Bach’s secular cantata Geschwinde, geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde in the recording “Myths  Contested” with Washington Bach Consort, and in his solo debut recording Art Songs of the Jewish Diaspora, both on the ACIS label. A respected scholar of Sephardic Jewish music, Ian has authored multiple articles on the subject in English and Ladino, the language of the Sephardic Jews. He has a wide range of publications that includes a history of the Sephardic choral music tradition and reflections on antisemitism in the field of historical performance. Ian is an emerging leader in the American Jewish community and a devoted mentor to young learners of Sephardic language, music, and culture. He holds degrees from Longy School of Music of Bard College and Westminster Choir College, and currently writing his dissertation in Jewish n at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations at the Sorbonne, Paris and studies cantorial arts at Abraham Geiger Kolleg in Potsdam, Germany.

In this 4-sessions series, we will explore different voices and perspectives from various segments of Israeli society in light of the ongoing situation in Israel.