The young Israeli pianist and composer Matan Porat is a graduate of the famed Juilliard School in New York. He further broadened his experience under the guidance of such teachers as Maria João Pires, Menahem Pressler, and András Schiff. He has given solo recitals in Paris, Berlin, and Frankfurt and at London’s Wigmore Hall, and he has appeared with such important orchestras as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Sinfonia Varsovia, and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. As a player of chamber music, he is invited frequently to international music festivals, where he has shared the stage with partners including Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Sharon Kam, Alisa Weilerstein, and members of the Guarneri Quartet. His extraordinarily broad repertoire includes music ranging from Scarlatti to Ligeti. He is also already sufficiently established on the international scene as a composer. Among his works to have been performed are the opera Animal Farm, based on George Orwell’s novel, a Requiem, and a Concerto for Mandolin.

The violist Ori Kam has been devoting himself to music since he was six years old, but he first began playing viola at the age of fifteen. He began his studies in Israel, then he continued his musical education with Pinchas Zukerman at the Manhattan School of Music in New York and at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. He is a laureate of a number of international competitions, including the Paganini Prize of the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. In 2007, he issued a recording of Max Bruch’s Double Concerto for Viola and Clarinet together with his sister, the clarinettist Sharon Kam, and three years later he recorded Telemann’s Twelve Fantasies for Solo Viola. He appears on stage regularly playing chamber music with such figures as Daniel Barenboim, András Schiff, and Itzhak Perlman. From 2004 to 2006 he was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic, and he is currently the violist of the Jerusalem String Quartet. He makes frequent appearances at music festivals including Verbier, Tangelwood, Aspen, and Santa Fe, and he is the founder of the Israel Chamber Music Society.

The Israeli clarinettist Sharon Kam is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, where she studied with Charles Neidich. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta. After winning the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 1992, she began receiving invitations to perform with the most famous orchestras of Europe, the United States, and Japan. On the occasion of the gala celebration of W. A. Mozart’s 250^th birthday, she played his Clarinet Concerto in A Major on a live television broadcast that was seen in thirty-three countries around the world. She devotes herself intensively to chamber music in collaboration with Heinrich Schiff, Christian Tetzlaff, and Leonidas Kavakos. She is a dedicated promoter of contemporary music, having given the world premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Concerto for Clarinet and String Trio, for example. Besides the classical and modern concert repertoire, she also occasionally performs jazz.