Nurit Bar-Josef

Opening Night Orchestra celebrating pivotal moments in Western music Strings Music Festival’s Season 39 classical series opens with a vibrant program tracing two and a half centuries of Western music evolution. Michael Sachs conducts a distinguished orchestra featuring concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef. The performance includes Carl Stamitz’s Orchestral Quartet of 1776, Beethoven’s final String Quartet from 1826, Dvořák’s radiant Serenade for Strings from 1876, and Barber’s lyrical Serenade, written in 1928.

Nurit Bar-Josef was appointed concertmaster of the National Symphony Orchestra in 2001 (then the youngest such appointee to a major U.S. orchestra) by then-Music Director Leonard Slatkin. She was previously assistant concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops from 1998 to 2001 and assistant principal second violin of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 1998.

Bar-Josef studied with Aaron Rosand at The Curtis Institute of Music and continued her studies at The Juilliard School with Robert Mann. Her solo appearances have included the National Symphony, Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, St. Louis Symphony, National Philharmonic, and Britt Festival Orchestras, among others. She has been guest concertmaster for the Seattle Symphony, Houston Symphony, Arizona Fest Orchestra, and Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.

An active chamber musician, she has since performed at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Bay Chamber Festival (ME) and Aspen Music Festival, and festivals in Tanglewood, Portland (ME), Kingston (RI), Steamboat Springs, Garth Newel, and Caramoor, where she performed piano quartets with Andre Previn at his Rising Stars Festival.

She was a founding member of the Kennedy Center Chamber Players for nine years and is a founding member of the Dryden Quartet. Bar-Josef has been a featured guest on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition and has had the honor of performing at the White House with Maestro Christoph Eschenbach. She is currently playing on a G.B. Guadagnini, 1773, the ex-Grumiaux, ex-Silverstein.