Guest Artist Bio

Sharon Kam

Performs in Mozart Clarinet Concerto: April 12-14, 2008

Sharon Kam was titled “a most imaginative and individual artist” by the Gramophone magazine. Her recordings prove her being equally at home with the classical repertoire as with contemporary music and jazz.

Kam is a native of Israel, where she studied with Eli Eban and Chaim Taub. At the age of 16, she made her orchestra debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta. She was encouraged by Isaac Stern and is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where she studied with Charles Neidich. Winner of the ARD International Competition 1992 in Munich, Kam has performed since with the most renowned orchestras in the USA, Europe and Japan.

During the 2007-2008 season Kam will perform with the Israel Philharmonic, Oregon Symphony, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of Prague, and Saarbrücken, among others. A frequent participant in summer festivals, Kam has appeared at the Ravinia, Verbier, Schleswig-Holstein, Vancouver, Risør, Marlboro and Cork Festivals and is a regular guest at pianist Lars Vogt’s Festival Spannungen in Heimbach, Germany. A lover of chamber music, she regularly collaborates with Heinrich Schiff, Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Marie-Luise Neunecker, Antje Weithaas, Gustav Rivinius, Tabea Zimmermann and Leonidas Kavakos.

Kam is a dedicated performer of contemporary music and regularly performs concertos by composers such as Manfred Trojahn und Brett Dean. She has premiered Krzysztof Penderecki’s Clarinet Concerto and Quartet and Peter Ruzicka’s Clarinet Concerto, Erinnerung.

In Summer 2003 she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival, where she was immediately reengaged for 2005 and 2006. On the occasion of Mozart’s 250th Anniversary, Kam performed a live television broadcast in 33 countries of the Mozart clarinet concerto from the Estates Theatre in Prague.

Her most recent CD for Berlin Classics with the Leipzig Radio Orchestra, for which she again received the Echo Prize for instrumentalist of the year in 2006, includes works by Spohr, Weber, Rossini and Mendelssohn. She received her first Echo in 1998 for the recordings of Weber concertos with Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. In addition to a recital CD with pianist Itamar Golan and a recording of the Mozart and Krommer concertos, a recording of Krzysztof Penderecki’s clarinet works conducted by the composer was released in 1999. Her CD American Classics with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by her husband Gregor Bühl, was awarded the prize of the “Deutsche Schallplattenkritik.”