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Experimental musician Carmel Raz has been gathering international recognition for her activities as a composer, violinist and improviser. Her works have recently been heard at concert halls and on radio broadcasts across North America, Europe and Israel, performed by ensembles such as the Arditti, Molinari and Pacifica Quartets, Orkest de Ereprijs, Eighth Blackbird, Quintet Attacca, Vox Novus, Musica Nova Israel, the NY Miniaturist Ensemble, the Modern Contemporary Players of Texas, and artists such as Chia-Ying Hsu, Ron Merhavi and Anna Prohaska. Her music has been presented at festivals and conferences including the Toronto Summer Festival, the Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn, Holland, the American Composers Alliance Festival in New York City, June in Buffalo, the Midwest Graduate Music Consortium, Music06 at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the Jazz-o-Nova Festival in Tel-Aviv, and the SoundField Festival in Chicago. She has received grants and commissions from Meet the Composer, the Mellon Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, ASCAP, the Rabinovitch Foundation, the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, the Israel Chamber Music Institute and the Tel-Aviv Academy of Music, as well as first place in the Musica Donum Dei Composition Competition and the Karen Sokolof Javitch Composition Competition. She was also a finalist in the 2007 BMI Women's Commissioning Competition and the 2007 Volti Composition Competition, and was composer-in-residence with the Chicago-based Millennium Chamber Players for the 2007-2008 concert season. As a violinist, Carmel was concertmaster of Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and of the Young Israel Philharmonic, and was a member of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, appearing across Europe and Asia under the batons of Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim and Claudio Abbado. She has collaborated with many composers, ranging from as Evan Ziporyn, Helmut Lachenmann and Osvaldo Golijov to John Zorn and Alvin Curran, on performances of their works, including world premieres of Lachenmann's Grido Double at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland (2005), Ziporyn's Sulvasutra with the Silk Road Project Workshop at Carnegie Hall (2006), and the Israeli premiere of Zorn's music for string quartet (2008). Highlights of her upcoming performance season include concerts a tour of Holland with the Israel Contemporary String Quartet, and a tour of Bulgaria with the Comprovisations Ensemble. In addition to her activities as a classical performer, Carmel is very active as an improvising musician, performing on violin, viola and mandolin in a variety of music genres ranging from Jazz to World Music and Electronica. She has collaborated with artists including Klezmer musicians David Krakauer, Paul Brody, and DJ Socalled, Yoyo Ma's Silk Road Project, Jazz musicians Patricia Barber, Greg Ward, Avishai Cohen, Omer Avital, Soul singer Motep, Chris Adler and Thai music band Wong Krajaukthet, and with electronic music artists Ido Govrin and Amnon Wolman. Born in 1982, Carmel grew up in the United States and Israel. She holds degrees from the Hochschule fuer Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin, Germany, and from the University of Chicago. Download Biography Download C.V.