Violin News Shows Composition Improvisation Projects Links Biography Research Gallery

CARMEL RAZ composes, performs and researches music. As a COMPOSER, Carmel's music has been performed by the Arditti, Molinari, Carmel and Pacifica Quartets, the Meitar Ensemble, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, and the Orkest de Ereprijs throughout Europe, Israel and North America. She has been commissioned by Musica Nova, the Omaha Area Youth Philharmonic, the Millennium Chamber Players and Israel Chamber Music Institute, and her music has been broadcast on Israeli, American, and European radio. She has received grants from Meet the Composer, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, ASCAP, the Rabinovitch Foundation, the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and the Tel-Aviv Academy of Music, as well as top awards in the Musica Donum Dei and the Sokolof Javitch Composition Competitions. On VIOLIN, Carmel has been featured as a chamber musician at Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, and the Kennedy Center. She has performed with the Israel Contemporary Players, the Israel Contemporary String Quartet, the Ensemble Modern Academy, the Meitar Ensemble, the Tel-Aviv Soloists Ensemble, Ensemble Noamnesia, and Red Light New Music and at a variety of international music festivals. She was concertmaster of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and of the Young Israel Philharmonic, and was a member of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, touring across Europe and Asia under the batons of Boulez, Barenboim and Abbado. In addition to her activities as a classical performer, Carmel is active as an IMPROVISER, performing on violin and viola in a variety of genres ranging from Jazz to free improv and world music. Described as "impressive" by Cadence Magazine and "very strong" by Improviser Magazine, she has collaborated with artists including Omer Avital, Eran Zur, Tamir Muskat, Misha Piatigorsky, and Yoyo Ma's Silk Road Project, and played at the Winter Jazz Fest, Blue Note, Zinc, the Green Mill, Iridium, the Velvet Lounge and the Jazz Gallery. She also tours with the Jewish music band Tafillalt, with whom she has performed across Europe (notably at the "Sounds of Israel" Festival in Hamburg and the Lviv Klezfest in Ukraine), and can be heard on recordings on Hatav Hashmini, Apprise, Aural Terrains, Imaginary Chicago, and Interval labels. Additional CD recordings slated for release this year include collaborations with Victoria Hanna and with Jason Lindner's "Breeding Ground" supergroup. Carmel is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Columbia University. She received her PhD in MUSIC THEORY from Yale in 2015, and holds a Masters degree in composition from the University of Chicago and a Diplom in violin performance from the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin. Her primary research interests focus on the music and neuroscience of the early Romantic period, in particular the influence of different theories of cognition on musical works, instrument design, and aesthetics. She is also interested in the influence of Common Sense philosophy on musical thought in the Scottish Enlightenment, the interaction between experimental music and phonetics in the early twentieth century, and music in the Middle East. As an academic, her work has been recognized and supported by the Theron Rockwell Field Dissertation Prize, a Mrs. Giles Whiting Dissertation Fellowship, a Mellon Graduate Achievement Award, and the Baden Württemberg Stiftung. She has published in 19th-Century Music, the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie, Asian Music, the Journal of Literature and Science, and the Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies. Download C.V. (opens in new window)