CLARINET
Yasmina Spiegelberg, Principal
Hailed for her “enchanting” performances (New York Classical Review), her “lambent tone and persuasive phrasing” (Oberon’s Grove), Swiss-French clarinetist Yasmina Spiegelberg is the laureate of several international and national competitions including the Rotary International Competition Madrid Velazquez, the Frances Walton Seattle Competition, and the USC Concerto Competition. Additionally, she was awarded the Special Prize at the 2nd Vienna International Music Competition, and the Golden Medal at the 4th Manhattan International Music Competition. Her clarinet trio, The Tandru Trio, was the winner at the Beverly Hills National Auditions in 2019. She is also a member of the preeminent woodwind quintet, ConnectFive, which has been heard across the Northeast, invited at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and was an Ensemble Forward Grantee through Chamber Music America.
Based in NYC, she is currently a fellow at Ensemble Connect, the resident ensemble of Carnegie Hall, which features extraordinary young musicians from around the globe who are committed to community engagement, teaching, entrepreneurship, and leadership. She has appeared in many renowned concert halls including the Oslo Concert Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and Carnegie Hall.
Yasmina is a guest soloist with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, the Nomad Symphony Orchestra (France) and the String Ensemble Rapsodia (Switzerland) and collaborates with conductors such as Stefan Asbury, Richard Egarr, Franck Ollu, Paul Watkins, and Xiao Zhang. She is guest clarinetist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Her chamber music collaborations include Peter Frankl, Clive Greensmith, Thomas Guei, Peter Kolkay, Cynthia Phelps, Hila Plitmann, Mark Steinberg, and Roger Tapping, and she’s also a guest performer with the Grammy-nominated ensemble A Far Cry. A passionate advocate of contemporary classical music, she collaborates with composers Kalevi Aho, Reena Esmail, inti figgis-vizueta, Liza Lim, James MacMillan, and Steve Reich.
Yasmina appears as a recitalist at Core Memory Music and as a chamber musician at Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and Rocket City New Music in Huntsville, AL. She performs in some of the finest concert series in Los Angeles, including Dilijan, Classical Sundays at Six, LACMA Sunday’s Live, and Music In The Mansion. In recent years, she has performed at world-famous festivals such as Yellowbarn (USA), where she has also been a Residency Artist, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival (USA), Caramoor, Festival POTE (France), and the International Ensemble Modern Academy (Austria). Furthermore, she is broadcasted live as a soloist on KUSC (California) and KING-FM (Washington) and she recorded an album in Switzerland featuring concertos and other works for clarinet and orchestra.
As part of a cultural exchange between Norway and Côte d’Ivoire, Yasmina traveled with Barth Niava, director of Oslo’s African Culture Institute (CAK), to Addah, Côte d’Ivoire, to learn several traditional songs from the village. In celebration of the CAK’s 40th Anniversary, she premiered Pierre Thilloy’s Le Chant des Lagunes, a quadruple concerto for violin, clarinet, bassoon, djembe, and orchestra, which took inspiration from the same traditional songs.
An experienced educator, Yasmina has taught at Juilliard Pre-College, The Santa Monica Conservatory, Musique & Son in Switzerland, and is a faculty member for the Young Artist Program at Yellowbarn where she teaches chamber music and clarinet. She was recently appointed as clarinet faculty at Riverdale Country School. She has an experience encompassing more than fifteen years of teaching clarinet to students of all ages. As part of her Fellowship with Ensemble Connect, she was a teaching artist in residence at Robert F. Wagner Middle School in Manhattan, and now at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn.
She holds a Bachelor’s from the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne (Switzerland) and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (The Netherlands), as well as a Master in Performance from the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo with Björn Nyman. She also earned a Graduate Certificate and an Artist Diploma from the University of Southern California with world-famous Professor Yehuda Gilad.
