Michael Guttman

Michael Guttman is a violinist, conductor and artistic director of music festivals around the world, including Pietrasanta in Concerto, Crans Montana Classics, Le Printemps du Violon in Paris, and Made in Polin in Warsaw. He is also musical director of the Napa Valley Symphony and the Belgian Chamber Orchestra. He won the prestigious "Scopus" Prize of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2014 for his musical career, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for his album dedicated to Hindemith, recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Guttman is the youngest violinist ever admitted to the Conservatoire Royal in Brussels, which happened when he was only 10 years old. His debut at 14, with Jean Pierre Rampal, allows him to meet his future mentor, Isaac Stern, who suggests he continue his studies at the Juilliard School in New York, where he perfects himself with Dorothy Delay and the Juilliard Quartet. He studied with the legendary Russian violinist Boris Goldstein, in homage to whom he organized, together with the Maestro himself and Zakhar Bron, a violin competition in Bern, Switzerland in 2014.
As the leading Belgian violinist, he was chosen to represent his country at the Expo in Seville in 1992. Concerts at Lincoln Center, Barbican Hall, Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, Salle Pleyel in Paris and Asia they were followed by invitations to prestigious festivals, such as the Martha Argerich Project, the Festival of Flanders, the Jurij Bashmet festival in Elba, the Folles Journées in Nantes and Tokyo, and the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad. He participated in the world premiere of Philip Glass's double concerto for violin and cello with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in the United States and Asia, with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, conducted in both circumstances by the great Dutch master Jaap Van Zweden. He has participated in tours with, among others, Martha Argerich, Nestor Marconi, Nigel Kennedy, Boris Berezovskij and Vadim Repin.
After collaborating with composers and conductors such as Lukas Foss and Noam Sheriff, he developed a career as an orchestra conductor, which led him, in 2017, to perform in the most prestigious concert halls in Spain with the legendary pianist Ivo Pogorelich. His encounter with Astor Piazzolla pushed him to explore the different styles of tango, and in 2017 he composed the first double concert for violin and bandoneon with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Juan Pablo Jofre, a famous Argentine bandoneon player.
Michael Guttman plays a 1735 Guarneri del Gesù violin, once owned by the great Italian violinist and composer Giovanni Battista Viotti.