Composer Nimrod Borenstein has gained support from Vladimir Ashkenazy and other influential figures, leading to widespread performances of his orchestral works. He has also written vocal music, concertos, and chamber music. Borenstein was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1969. His family moved to Paris when he was three, but he has continued to maintain ties to his native country. His father, Alec Borenstein, was a well-known painter. Borenstein heard a concert in a park with his family and then and there announced his ambition to become a musician. Borenstein studied violin in Paris and earned support from the Cziffra Foundation, which enabled him to move to London in 1986 and enroll at the Royal College of Music for violin studies with Itzhak Rashkovsky at the Royal College of Music. He also studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Paul Patterson and, for a time, pursued dual careers as a violinist and composer before concluding that time permitted only one, choosing the latter. By his late teens, Borenstein had already written a number of compositions and chose a cello sonata as his Op. 1; he has since numbered his works according to the old-style scheme of opus numbers. His catalog included more than 90 works as of 2020. Borenstein's music has been performed across Europe, the Americas, Israel, and East Asia, including in such halls as Carnegie Hall in New York, the Royal Festival Hall in London, and the Salle Gaveau in Paris. Among his most successful pieces is a ballet, Suspended, Op. 69, which was premiered at the Royal Opera House in London in 2015 and has been performed more than 150 times. A recording of that work by the Freie Orchestra Berlin launched the Solaire label. Several of Borenstein's other works have been recorded, and in 2020, his string quartet Cieli d'Italia, Op. 68, was heard on the album Italian Postcards by the Quartetto di Cremona. ~ James Manheim