Larry Rachleff, our Week 2 Sewanee Symphony conductor, will not be able to attend. The SSMF is proud to announce his replacement, Yaniv Dinur.
Yaniv Dinur is the winner of numerous international conducting competitions. In September 2009, he won a special Second Prize – an award the jury created especially for him – in the International Eduardo Mata Conducting Competition in Mexico City. In 2005, he won the Yuri Ahronovitch First Prize in the inaugural Aviv Conducting Competition that was held in Tel Aviv. He is also a grant recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and The Zubin Mehta Scholarship Endowment. In 2011, Yaniv Dinur was chosen by the League of American Orchestras to be a featured conductor at the Bruno Walter National Conducting Preview that took place in New Orleans with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.
Yaniv Dinur began his conducting career at the age of 19 when, following a conducting masterclass with Gerhard Markson in Dublin, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland issued several invitations to Dinur to come back and perform with them. Following this event, he was invited to perform with the Israel Camerata Orchestra in Jerusalem, making him the youngest conductor ever invited to conduct an orchestra in Israel. Since then, he has also conducted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of Portugal, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto (Italy), Orchestra Giovanile Italiana, Torino Philharmonic Orchestra, Solisti di Perugia, Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese (Italy), Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan, State Orchestra of St. Petersburg (Russia), Sofia Festival Orchestra of Bulgaria, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada. Since 2003, he has conducted the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra annually at the Young Artists Competition which is broadcasted live on the Israeli radio.
Yaniv Dinur has worked closely with such world-class conductors as Lorin Maazel, Michael Tilson Thomas, Pinchas Zukerman, Kurt Masur and Jorma Panula. He holds a Doctorate in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance where he studied with Prof. Kenneth Kiesler.
Yaniv Dinur is a passionate lecturer and music educator. He has made it his mission to bring college students to the concert halls, and he often meets with students in universities around the world and introduces them to classical music. In addition, he lectures regularly about the connections between music and the visual arts, a subject that he has been exploring in the past decade. He has lectured in such venues as the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the University of Minnesota, the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. In 2012, he founded the conducting studio at the Conservatory of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and has created and taught several courses at the Jerusalem Academy as well as the Dante Alighieri Society in Israel.
Born in Jerusalem in 1981, Yaniv Dinur began studying the piano at the age of 6 with his aunt, Olga Shachar and later with Prof. Alexander Tamir, Tatiana Alexanderov and Mark Dukelsky. At the age of 16, he began to study conducting with Dr. Evgeny Zirlin. While still in high school, Dinur began his formal studies with Dr. Zirlin at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. After graduating from the Jerusalem Academy, he studied privately with conductor Mendi Rodan.
Yaniv Dinur served in the Israeli Army’s Excellent Musicians Unit. During his service, he conducted the Education Corps Orchestra and wrote musical arrangements for the different ensembles of the army.
