Giora Schmidt

Residents of the New River Valley and beyond will have a chance Friday to sample the latest offering from Musica Viva!, a concert featuring world-renowned violinist Giora Schmidt and the Avanti Ensemble.

Schmidt, who is the protege of Itzhak Perlman, made his Carnegie Hall debut at age 19, received the Avery Fisher Career Grant and at 22 and has performed or will perform in pretty much every enviable concert hall imaginable.

On the eve of his next performance, which will feature concert organizer and violinist David Ehrlich and two new members of the Avanti Ensemble, Schmidt takes a few minutes to talk about his career to date.

What interested you about playing this concert?

Giora Schmidt: I thought it would be a fabulous idea. I’ve known of David Ehrlich’s wonderful reputation and what he stands for musically, and I thought for me to come down and play with him would be a lot of fun and artistically good as well.

Are you most looking forward to anything in particular?

GS: I just love playing concerts, and I love good music with good people. And I’ll be down in Blacksburg for about a week rehearsing with the bunch, so I’m looking forward to the preparation of it and getting to know everybody. And it’s always fun to meet new people and see new places … It’ll be my first time in Blacksburg.

Blacksburg is a cool place, although in the fall the art scene definitely has to struggle to draw attention in the midst of a college football town.

GS: I have played in many a college football town.

It’s always like, you see the parking lot where the stadium is and you see the parking lot where the concert hall is and you wonder, where did everybody go?

There’s always parking at the concert hall, folks. OK, I’ll just stop there.

So, you get described as a player of the “old school.” What does that refer to?

GS: The famous violinists that were playing from the ’40s to the ’60s and really up until the ’80s for me that was really the height of tradition in violin playing. What were then household names — Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Millstein, David Oistrakh, all these guys were the Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera of their day.

And they had a way about them. It wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan style; everybody had their own voice. I equate it to Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong — those guys in that era of jazz and popular singing had their own voice and that seems to be gone today as well, even in the popular music realm.

So old-school playing … is more about an individual style and being true to the music.

Does that old-school influence come across in your repertoire?

GS: Exactly, it comes across a little in the repertoire, and in the sound that I’m looking for. I find that the sound that was achieved in the old days of violin playing was a much more robust, throaty, rich kind of sound. A lot of young violinists today who are considered to be in my generation, I don’t find that they value that. It sounds almost too perfect, too clean, almost like you could synthesize it.

Something tangible or visceral in the tone.

GS: In the tone, exactly, and that was valued much more in the old school … and that’s what I try to bring across every time I put the bow to the string.

Can you tell me about the trio you tour with?

GS: Yeah, for about two weeks out of the year sporadically I tour with the cellist Zuill Bailey, who is actually a Virginia native and ironically just played with the Roanoke Symphony. And the pianist Navah Perlman. Navah I met through her father, Itzhak Perlman, who I studied with for six years at the Juilliard School. So we have a fantastic rapport together musically and personally — we’re friends … We’re not a full-time trio; we’re three soloists that love each other’s company … The three of us believe that if you’re friends away from the concert stage, and also have the same musical values, it’s got to be good when you come together to play.

And it is — we’ve had a fabulous response … And we perform maybe eight to 10 concerts a year.

In the upcoming season, you’re releasing your debut recital recording and you have some very big gigs in Tokyo and Paris.

GS: Yeah, it’s an exciting year … To play in Paris and Tokyo is kind of a big deal. And my first record, I’m very excited about it. It’s coming out in November.

It’s a nice sampling of a proper violin recital. It has five pieces, including everything from the Baroque to the Romantic to the flashy showcase thing.

Any specific ambitions you had in recording this album?

GS: Basically to accomplish a documentation of what I sounded like at 22. I hope to be doing this for a very long time, and if one is on the right track one shouldn’t sound the same way at 32 as they did at 22.

What were the major steppingstones for you, in your career thus far?

GS: I had a very normal childhood — I played sports and chased after girls. I wasn’t a huge practicer. I was one of those kids that people said, “he’s very talented; if he practiced more he could become something.” It didn’t really sink in until I was 16, when I had the opportunity to study with Itzhak Perlman and Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School. So that was the turning point, and I started practicing my butt off.

What was it like studying with Perlman, especially at such a young age?

GS: It was an opportunity that comes once in a lifetime, to work with such a master … We’ve had a very close relationship, but he’s also been very much in the background — he’s not an overbearing mentor in any way, and he also wants me to stand on my own two feet without people saying about me, “you know the only reason he’s playing a concert is because he’s Perlman’s guy.”

He gives me advice, and I play for him whenever I need to, and I just enjoy his company. And I’ve had a couple opportunities to work with him as a conductor … and I’ve gone to his house to play chamber music and to have dinner with him and his family. All of that has helped tremendously in my musical development and in understanding what real high-level standard is about.

The Musica Viva! concert is at 8 p.m. Friday at Blacksburg Baptist Church.