Yaniv Segal
Program: Deconstructing Beethoven
Yaniv Segal conducted the RSO on October 22, 2022. Listen to his pre-concert lecture, view the Digital Concert Guide, and complete the post-concert survey on the Digital Stage.
Listen to a conversation between Yaniv and Guest Podcast Host Margo Stedman (Approximately 25 minutes)
Listen to Yaniv talk at Soundbites, a live luncheon with RSO principal trumpet Mark Baldin (Approximately 1 hour)
Biography
Creative polymath Yaniv Segal has achieved critical success since childhood for his work as a symphonic conductor, composer, actor, and violinist. A rising star who is “redefining classical music” (Esquire Magazine), Yaniv is the Music Director of the Salina Symphony, Conductor Laureate and Artistic Advisor of the Chelsea Symphony, and the former Assistant Conductor of both the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Naples Philharmonic. He has assisted at the New York Philharmonic and collaborated with performers ranging from Yitzhak Perlman to the Beach Boys. Guest conducting engagements have included the Minnesota Orchestra, Kansai Philharmonic, Sinfonietta Cracovia, and Beethoven Academy Orchestra, with performances described as “enthusiastic, lively, and incisive” (Giornale di Sicilia) and “illuminating” (New York Times).
In 2020, NAXOS released Yaniv’s Beethoven REimagined, a commercial recording made with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The album, called “exciting [and] outrageous” (Times of London), presents contemporary music inspired by Beethoven arranged and written by Yaniv as well as composer/DJ Gabriel Prokofiev. Previous commercial releases include the works of David Chesky on the album Joy and Sorrow, and The Mice War, an opera that teaches children about the folly of war.
Drawing on his experience as a music educator and father of two young boys, Yaniv wrote The Harmony Games in 2018 to introduce school-age children to the orchestra while connecting music to math; it has already been performed over 50 times. In the 2021/22 season, Yaniv’s works were performed by the Reno Philharmonic, Ashland Symphony Orchestra, Grand Rapids Youth Symphony and Classical Orchestra, and Norwalk Symphony.
Photo Credit: Brian Thomas Photography
Yaniv grew up in New York with a Polish mother — a violinist who was one of the first women in the New York Philharmonic — and an Israeli father — a luthier who made the instruments on which his family plays. As a child, he sang at the Metropolitan Opera, then starred as Colin in the International Broadway Tour of The Secret Garden and was “convincing” (New York Times) as Joe in Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood at Lincoln Center. He studied violin with Setsu Goto and twice was a soloist with the Yonkers Philharmonic. Yaniv attended Vassar College and earned graduate degrees in conducting and composition at the University of Michigan with support from the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. He has also studied with Lorin Maazel and Kurt Masur and continues to receive mentorship from international conductors Leonard Slatkin and Andrey Boreyko.
