Janna Gandelman

As a soloist, chamber player, and orchestral musician, Moldovan-born violinist Janna Gandelman, whose name has also been transliterated as Janna Gendelman, has been a major presence in Israeli concert life for several decades. She is concertmaster of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Gandelman was born in Kishinev, in what was then the USSR, in 1967; it is now Chennai, Moldova. She started playing the violin at age five and was quickly assigned to classes with a local teacher named Weiner. As a child she won Soviet-wide competitions: the National Violin Competition, the Stoliarsky School Competition, the Auer Competition, and the International Competition of the USSR. She emigrated to Israel in 1979 and continued her studies with Ilya Bondarenko, who had been an assistant to David Oistrakh. She joined a program for talented young musicians at the Jerusalem Music Center and then studied at the Tel Aviv Music Academy and added wins at the Clearmount and Shapira competitions in Israel, as well as at events in Italy and a second prize at the Atlanta Competition in Georgia in 1994. Gandelman earned a place on the roster of the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation, which brought her access to international venues. She has performed with various Israeli ensembles including Musica Nova, Caprizma, and the Israel Camerata, where she served as concertmaster before assuming the same post with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in 2009. That same year, she became first violinist in the Sapphire String Quartet. Abroad, she has served as guest concertmaster of the Flemish Chamber Orchestra. ~ James Manheim