Seminars

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Robert Sherman
Broadcaster, writer, teacher, and radio personality, Robert Sherman is probably best known for his work at WQXR, where he has been Program Director, Executive Producer and (currently) Senior Consultant. For twenty-three years, he presided in “The Listening Room,” and he continues to present “The McGraw-Hill Companies’ Young Artists Showcase” for the station. Since their inception, he has hosted the Avery Fisher Career Grant Award presentations at Lincoln Center, and the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday specials from the Harlem School of the Arts. His multiple award-winning folk series “Woody’s Children” is now heard in New York on Public Radio’s WFUV. On the faculties of the Juilliard and Manhattan Schools, and President of the Advisory Council at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, Robert Sherman has given seminars at Oberlin, Yale, the Eastman School, the University of Arizona, and the Mannes College of Music, where he is also an artist member of the Board of Governors. For over 25 years a music critic and columnist for the New York Times, Sherman has written two books with Victor Borge, is the co-author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Classical Music,” and with his brother, Alexander Sherman, compiled a pictorial biography of their mother, the renowned pianist Nadia Reisenberg. He is on the advisory boards of many major cultural organizations, as well as serving them variously as pre-concert lecturer, competition judge, panel moderator, and fund-raising emcee. As a concert narrator, Robert Sherman has performed with such ensembles as Canadian Brass, the United States Military Academy (West Point) Band, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and Philharmonia Virtuosi; among his many performances are the world premieres of works written especially for him, by Seymour Barab, William Mayer, Issachar Miron and Soong Fu Yuan.
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Avner Dorman
Praised as a “fresh, young voice, worth following,” Avner Dorman has quickly risen to become one of Israel’s most successful and renowned composers. At the age of 25, he became the youngest composer to win Israel’s prestigious Prime Minister’s Award, and that same year he was awarded the Golden Feather Award from the Israeli Society of Composers and Publishers. Since coming to the United States, Dorman received several international awards from ASCAP, ACUM, and the Asian Composers League. Dorman’s unique approach to rhythm and timbre has attracted some of the world’s leading conductors,, including Zubin Mehta, Asher Risch, Simone Young and Michael Stern to bring his music to audiences of the New York Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic,Vienna Radio Symphony, Hamburg Philharmonic, Musikverein, Cabrillo Festival and others. Dorman’s music achieves a rare combination of rigorous compositional construction while preserving the sense of excitement and spontaneity usually associated with Jazz, Rock, or Ethnic Music. A pianist himself and an avid devotee of chamber music, Dorman has composed two String Quartets, two Violin Sonatas, a Piano and Woodwind Quintet, two Piano Trios and numerous works for piano solo. He has composed two Percussion Concerti, and has made significant contributions to the repertoire of other unique instruments and ensembles with his Mandolin Concerto, Piccolo Concerto, Saxophone Concerto, Concerto for Violin and a Rock Band and a work for Soprano, Harp and Two Pianos. Born in 1975, Avner Dorman completed his Doctoral degree as a C.V. Starr fellow at the Juilliard School where he studied with John Corigliano and his Master’s degree at Tel Aviv University where he majored in music, musicology, and physics and studied with former Soviet composer Josef Bardanashvilli. Dorman was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and served as composer in residence for the Israel Camerata from 2001 through 2003.