Israeli musician Michal Schmidt has been a double major instrumentalist throughout her career. She received her musical training in Israel at the Rubin Academy of Music of the Tel Aviv University, studying piano with Ilona Vincze and cello with Uzi Wiezel. She later continued to study in the Advanced Performance Course of the Royal Academy of Music in London England. There, she was the only student in the history of the school to receive Artist Diplomas for two instruments in one year. In the United States Ms. Schmidt studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Guarneri Quartet cellist David Soyer, and at the University of the Arts (Masters Degree) with former New York Philharmonic principal cellist Lorne Munroe. She earned her Doctorate of Musical Arts at Temple University under Jeffrey Solow. Michal has taken part in seminars and master classes with William Pleeth, Lynn Harrell, Mischa Schneider, Mischa Maisky Josef Gingold, Karen Tuttle and many others. Her piano teachers in the United States were Raquel Adonaylo, Peter Serkin and Claude Frank.
Ms. Schmidt won numerous awards and scholarships in both piano and cello including stipends from the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation and the Israeli Arts Council; she received the Harold Samuels and Tobias Matthay piano awards of the Royal Academy of Music and the Josef Hoffman Competition award. She was also awarded prizes at the Jean Federic Perrenoud String Competition in Vienna, the Palm Beach International Piano Competition and the University of Maryland Piano Competition. She was selected for Who's Who among Students in American Universities & Colleges, and she is included in the 2009 edition of Who's Who in America. Ms. Schmidt is also an inductee of the Pi Kappa Lambda Society.
Her performances have been broadcast on the radio in the USA and Israel. As a contributing faculty at Dickinson College in PA, Michal was the cello professor as well as the chamber music coordinator at the college. She currently teaches at Haverford and Bryn Mawr as well as at the University of Pennsylvania. Ms Schmidt has been a returning faculty at the Israeli International Cello Congress and Festival which takes place annually in Israel.
Ms. Schmidt is an active performer as recitalist, chamber musician and soloist. She has appeared in concerts and conducted master classes in various cities in the US, Israel, South Korea, France, Costa Rica and Canada.
As a cellist, she is a member of the Network of New Music and the Hildegard Chamber Players and has performed with 1807 and Friends, Four Horizons and various performing organizations in the Philadelphia area. Recently Michal joined Piano4, a group of four pianists who tour and record unique repertoire arranged for this ensemble.
Michal Schmidt has established a recital series that pays TRIBUTE to solo and chamber music being written now. Many of the works are by composers with whom she has collaborated closely. Among those represented in the series are Osvaldo Golijov, Richard Wernick, Margaret Garwood, Mats Lidström, Jan Radzynski and Sylvia Glickman. The 2010 Tribute will depart from the usual format and will mark the two hundredth anniversary of Robert Schumann’s birth.