2024 Primrose International Viola Competition & American Viola Society Festival Program Book

2024 Primrose International Viola Competition Jurors

He premiered his own Viola Concerto (2005) in Bloomington, Brussels, and Stockholm with conductors Uriel Segal, Ronald Zollman, and Michael Bartosz, respectively.

Other compositions Include Toccatina A La Turk for two violins and GDG(!) for string trio (both dedicated to Mimi Zweig and her Violin Virtuosi), Esther for Violin and Viola, Tikvah for Viola Solo, commissioned by the ARD for the 2008 Munich Viola Competition. Listen (Three Poems by W.S. Merwin) for Tenor, Clarinet, Viola, Cello, and Double Bass was commissioned by the International Musicians Seminar and performed in September 2010 on its concert tour, including London’s Wigmore Hall, with tenor Mark Padmore. Cellist Gary Hoffman premiered Epitaph for Cello and String Orchestra in 2011 at the Kronberg Cello Festival and Arad gave the viola version of the piece at the 2012 International Viola Congress in Rochester, NY. In November 2018, Arad was a featured artist at the International Viola Congress in Rotterdam, premiering his new concerto for viola and strings, titled Ceci n’est pas un Bach. In 2013, Arad Completed a set of Twelve Caprices, the first six of which he performed at the 2004 Viola Congress in Minnesota along with the rarely played Tibor Serly Viola Concerto. Later, in 2015-16, he toured extensively with the set as a whole in Tel Aviv, Boston, Chicago, Toronto, Berlin, Frankfurt, Detmold, Hamburg, Paris, Madrid, Porto, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Munich. The Twelve Caprices along with his Tikvah are now published by Hofmeister Musikverlag, Leipzig, and can be heard on iTunes and CD Baby. Atar Arad is a recipient of the American Viola Society’s Career Achievement Award (June 2018) and the International Viola Society’s Silver Alto Clef 2018 “in recognition for his outstanding contributions to the to the viola” (November 2018). In 2021, the International Hindemith Viola Competition invited Arad to be one of its judges and commissioned the competition’s mandatory piece from him. All participants publicly premiered his Chaconne for solo viola in October that year, in Munich. Atar Arad plays on a viola by Niccolo Amati (the ‘Arad’) and uses a set of PI strings, made by Thomastik.

Cathy Basrak United States

A native of the Chicago area, Cathy Basrak earned her bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in spring 2000. Her teachers include Joseph de Pasquale, principal viola of the BSO from 1947 to 1964, and Michael Tree of the Guarneri String Quartet. She has participated in the Marlboro Music Festival, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. In addition, she has performed with the Brandenburg Ensemble and Boston’s Metamorphosen Ensemble and appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago, Detroit, and Bavarian

Radio symphony orchestras, and Boston Pops with John Williams. Basrak has won several awards, including Grand Prize in the Seventeen Magazine/General Motors National Concerto Competition, First Prize in the William E. Primrose Memorial Scholarship Competition, First Prize in the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, and Second Prize in the 46th International Music Competition of the ARD in Munich. Basrak teaches at the Boston Conservatory and Boston University and also coaches chamber ensembles at New England Conservatory.

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